THE  HIGHLANDERS 
OF  THE  SOUTH 


iw*" 


t' 


SAMUEL  H.THOMPSON 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


FROM  THE  LIBRARY  OF 
FRANK  J.  KLINGBERG 


oMcM:  )y.  j. 


THE  HIGHLANDERS 
OF  THE  SOUTH 


By 
SAMUEL  H.,  THOMPSON 


NEW  YORK:    EATON  &   MAINS 
CINCINNATI :  JENNINGS  &  GRAHAM 


Copyright,   19  lo,  by 
EATON  &  MAINS 


RL  F 


TO  MR.  JOHN  W,  FISHER  AND  MR.  JOHN 
A.  PATTEN,  WHO,  WITH  OTHER  LOYAL 
LAYMEN  IN  THE  FIELD,  HAVE,  WITH 
MONEY  AND  THROUGH  PERSONAL  SERV- 
ICE, AIDED  THE  HIGHLANDER  OF  THE 
SOUTH,  THIS  LITTLE  VOLUME  IS  APPRE- 
CIATIVELY   DEDICATED. 


J  o /30G2 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I  From  Whence  They  Come 13 

II  Where  They  Live 19 

III  Their  Characteristics 26 

IV  Their  Manners  and  Customs 29 

V  What  They  Do 34 

VI  Their  Service 38 

VII  What  They  Do  Not  Know 44 

VIII  The  Problem 54 

IX  Other  Denominations 65 

X  The  Methodist  Episcopal  Church 69 

XI  The  Progress  of  the  South 72 

XII  Unto  the  Last .- .- 79 


ILLUSTRATIONS 
The  Home  Place Frontispiece 

FACING  PAGE 

A  Genuine  "Razorback" 31 

An    Old    Church    in    which    Methodists    Continue    to 
Worship 50 

A  Weaver  and  Lover  of  Cats 79 


FOREWORD 

In  the  gathering  of  materials  for  this  brief  ac- 
count the  writer  has  sought  to  strike  a  happy 
medium  between  any  existing  extremes ;  he  has 
endeavored  to  be  conservative  in  all  things,  and 
he  has  been  careful  to  give  only  such  statements 
as  may  be  readily  substantiated. 

With  the  hope  of  stirring  the  people  everywhere 
to  a  deeper  sense  of  their  obligation  to  their  less 
fortunate  brothers,  and  with  the  desire  to  create 
within  the  minds  of  those  who  can  the  spirit  of 
helpfulness  to  those  who  cannot  but  would  if  they 
could,  is  this  little  volume  sent  forth. 

Samuel  H.  Thompson. 

Chuckey,  Tennessee. 


INTRODUCTION 

It  was  a  very  happy  thought  on  the  part  of  the 
Home  Missionary  Board  to  ask  Principal  Samuel 
H.  Thompson  to  prepare  this  little  volume  descrip- 
tive of  our  work  in  the  South.  No  one  in  all  my 
acquaintance  is  better  prepared  to  do  such  work 
intelligently  and  effectively  than  Principal  Thomp- 
son. Here  he  has  lived  and  wrought  for  years. 
All  who  know  him  are  deeply  impressed  with  the 
earnestness  of  his  consecration  and  his  splendid 
service  to  the  cause  of  Christian  education  in 
Tennessee. 

As  our  great  Church  becomes  aware  of  the 
important  work  being  done  in  this  section  the  re- 
sult is  sure  to  be  a  lively  interest  and  a  more  active 
cooperation. 

I  am  glad  to  bid  this  little  volume  a  hearty  God- 
speed and  to  hope  for  it  a  mission  of  blessing  to 
many  lives. 

William  F.  Anderson. 


XI 


CHAPTER  I 
From   Whence  They   Come 

It  is  rather  singular  that  a  people  migratory  in 
their  habits  may  be  able  to  trace  their  ancestry 
for  an  almost  unbroken  period  of  nearly  twenty 
centuries.  This  is  still  more  singular  when  we 
consider  that  these  people  were  probably  continent 
dwellers  to  begin  with ;  later,  islanders ;  after  many 
years  they  migrated  to  another  island,  and  thence 
to  a  great  and  rapidly  developing  continent — North 
America.  People  migratory  both  by  habit  and  by 
nature  usually  lose  sight  of  such  remote  things  as 
ancestry  and  lineage  in  the  nearer  and  more  per- 
sonal interest  of  posterity  and  sustenance  there- 
for. Moreover,  it  would  not  be  expected  of  a 
people  in  the  times  of  struggle  where  might  makes 
right,  of  conquest  not  only  for  gain  but  for  life 
as  well,  and  of  the  making  of  a  new  home,  that 
they  should  preserve  in  fullness  of  detail  such 
records.  Thus  we  find  little  written  of  the  early 
history  of  this  people. 

But  from  the  time  of  the  invasion  of  Ireland 
about  the  beginning  of  the  present  era  by  some 
foreign  tribes,  probably  from  the  European  con- 
tinent near  by,  forty-six  in  number,  who  were 
victors  on  the  Hibernian  Isle,  we  have  a  practically 
unbroken  account  of  the  people  known  to  history 
as  the  Scotch-Irish.  Among  the  tribes  above  men- 
tioned was  one  known  as  the  Scotriage,  and  sub- 
sequently   by    the    Latinized    form,    Scoti.      They 

13 


14  The  Highlanders  of  the  South 

seem  to  have  been  victors  over  all  other  tribes  and 
to  have  led  the  later  invasions  of  Britain.  Early 
they  showed  advanced  elements  of  thrift  and  prog- 
ress. Cormac,  a  chief  of  the  Irish  Scoti,  is  said 
to  have  introduced,  as  early  as  the  third  century, 
water  mills  into  Ireland,  and  to  have  established 
schools  for  the  study  of  law,  military  affairs,  and 
the  annals  of  the  country.  Laws  attributed  to  him 
continued  in  force  all  through  the  Middle  Ages.  Is 
it  any  wonder  that  the  descendants  of  such  chiefs 
have  been  always  a  liberty-loving  people  ? 

These  Scoti  chiefs  and  their  progeny  continued 
to  keep  themselves  known  in  the  border  warfare 
of  Ireland  and  Britain,  including  Scotland,  to  which 
country  they  gave  its  present  name,  until  the  ac- 
cession of  James  VI  of  Scotland  to  the  British 
throne  in  1603.  Some  vainly  thought  at  this  time 
that  because  the  Irish  were  the  original  "Scoti"  the 
Scottish  king  would  sympathize  with  oppressed, 
duke-ridden,  and  tax-burdened  Ireland.  But  not 
so.  Could  these  same  people  look  upon  their 
beloved  isle  from  then  to  now  they  would  see 
but  little  dift'erence  so  far  as  oppression  is  con- 
cerned. 

But  they  did  not  close  their  struggles  for  liberty 
because  of  discouragement.  Forced  to  take  the 
"Black  Oath"  of  Charles  I,  they  continued  to  be 
objects  of  oppression,  after  having  again  migrated, 
this  time  from  Scotland  to  Ireland,  early  in  the 
seventeenth  century,  taking  residence  in  the  county 
Ulster,  known  later  as  the  Ulster  Plantation.  In 
subsequent  persecutions  of  trade  by  William  III, 
a  liberal-minded  man  but  forced  as  king  to  sup- 
press, if  possible,  the  Irish  woolen  trade,  the  Ulster 


From  Whence  They  Come  1 5 

weavers  were  not  crushed,  but  rather  their  industry 
flourished. 

The  Scots  of  Ulster  were  supplemented  by  some 
Huguenot  refugees,  who  established  manufacturing 
interests  in  the  county.  However,  a  little  later 
commercial  restraints  brought  their  interests  to 
naught. 

The  sacramental  test  of  1704  was  seemingly 
just  as  hurtful  to  the  Scottish  Presbyterians  in  Ire- 
land as  to  the  Irish  Catholics,  though  the  former 
defended  the  town  of  Londonderry  in  favor  of  the 
crown.  But  the  last  straw  came  in  1772,  when  the 
"Steelboys"  rose  against  the  exactions  of  absentee 
landlords,  who  often  turned  out  Protestant  yeomen 
to  get  a  higher  rent  from  the  Roman  Catholic 
cottiers.  The  dispossessed  patriots,  true  to  their 
liberty  and  justice-loving  inheritance,  migrated  to 
the  great  American  continent  and  carried  with 
them  an  undying  hatred  of  England  which  had 
much  to  say  in  the  American  Revolution  so  soon 
to  follow.  Thus  it  is  seen  that  not  only  for 
injustice  to  America,  but  to  other  colonies  as  well, 
did  England  have  to  account. 

Prior  to  this  time,  however,  many  of  the  Scotch- 
Irish,  so  called  by  their  having  gone  from  Scotland 
to  Ulster,  had  come  to  the  southeastern  coast  of 
North  America,  settling  in  the  Carolinas,  some 
of  them  forming  a  part  of  the  "Regulators"  who 
were  defeated  by  the  crown  troops  under  Governor 
Tryon  at  the  battle  on  the  Alamance  River  early 
in  the  seventies  of  the  eighteenth  century.  They 
had  again  resisted  oppressive  taxation,  the  tax  this 
time  being  levied  to  erect  a  mansion  for  the  British 
governor.     Many  of  these   defeated  patriots  had 


1 6  The  Highlanders  of  the  South 

to  flee  into  more  remote  sections,  not  a  few  going 
into  the  territory  out  of  which  have  since  been 
carved  the  States  of  Tennessee  and  Kentucky,  and 
helping  to  settle  those  unbroken  forests. 

While  a  large  per  cent  of  the  some  five  millions 
of  people  in  the  Southern  Appalachians  are  Scotch- 
Irish,  it  must  not  be  supposed  that  all  are  of  that 
descent.  There  is  a  strain  of  other  blood,  but 
doubtless  the  oldest  strain  is  Scotch-Irish.  Next 
to  these  people  come  the  Germans  and  Dutch — 
"Black  Dutch"  they  are  called  by  many.  Of  more 
recent  years  many  emigrants  to  these  fertile  valleys 
and  well-timbered  hills  have  been  what  are  known 
locally  as  "Pennsylvania  Dutch,"  being  descend- 
ants of  early  Dutch  and  German  settlers  in  the  land 
of  Pennsylvania.  It  must  not  be  forgotten  that 
among  many  of  the  Southern  peoples  the  word 
"Dutch"  is  meant  to  imply  Germans  as  well  as  the 
people  from  Holland.  These  settlers,  whether  of 
the  pure  German  or  Dutch  strain,  prove  good  and 
valuable  additions  to  the  native  population,  being 
industrious,  energetic,  thrifty,  and  economical.  In 
many  instances  they  have  a  trade  and  ply  it  well. 
Some  of  them  are  potters ;  others,  carpenters, 
masons,  and  blacksmiths.  Not  a  few  of  the  early 
German  settlers  have  given  able  and  successful 
ministers,  one  German  family  giving  four  sons  to 
this  greatly  needed  profession.  Another  family  of 
German  and  Scotch-Irish  blending  has  five 
preachers,  three  sons  and  two  sons-in-law.  All  of 
these  nationalities  have  contributed  to  the  sturdy 
yeomanry  of  the  country  districts.  Nor  should 
we  forget  a  few  French  people  who  came  to  the 
Western    wilderness   and    contributed   their    share 


From  Whence  They  Come  1 7 

in  making  a  fertile  field  out  of  a  dense  forest. 
Sometimes  they  were  refugees ;  again,  they  came 
of  their  own  free  will,  seeking  a  new  country. 
England  did  not  fail  to  contribute  valuable  material 
from  her  overplus  of  island  population — a  popula- 
tion whose  ancestors  under  Henry  I,  Henry  IH, 
and  King  John  first  received  a  taste  for  constitu- 
tional liberty  and  slept  not  until  possessed  by  them 
on  both  sides  the  Atlantic. 

Perhaps  a  few  other  nationalities  have  come,  but 
their  influence  is  not  so  marked.  Once  in  a  great 
while  one  finds  an  old  Spanish  name  whose  owner 
doubtless  descended  from  some  follow^er  of  Cortez, 
Pizzaro,  or  De  Soto. 

From  such  cosmopolitan  sources  one  would 
expect  a  cosmopolitan  people.  But  such  is  hardly 
the  case,  as  will  be  seen  later. 
'  Out  of  this  strange  heterogeneous  mass  there 
has  evolved  a  compact  whole  presenting  a  solid 
front  against  Romanism,  j  Early  came  the  Presby- 
terians, Methodists,  and  Baptists.  It  would  seem 
that  the  Methodist  Church  took  the  lead  among  the 
common  people.  We  read  from  a  distinguished 
historian  of  one  of  these  mountain  States,  James 
Phelan  in  his  History  of  Tennessee:  "These  [the 
Methodists]  were  fond  of  touching  the  emotions 
and  feelings  of  their  congregations,  and  appealed 
directly  to  their  hearts.  They  brought  religion 
home  to  the  hearts  of  their  hearers,  whereas 
the  old  Presbyterians  only  tried  to  afifect  their 
reason  by  the  use  of  logic  and  of  quotations  from 
the  Bible,  and  by  expositions  of  doctrine.  The 
Methodists  soon  outstripped  the  Presbyterians, 
and  have  since  spread  all  through  the  Southwest." 


1 8  The  Highlanders  of  the  South 

The  same  writer  pays  the  following  tribute  to 
the  circuit-rider:  "The  circuit-rider  has  done  more 
to  build  up,  broaden,  and  strengthen  the  Methodist 
Church  than  all  other  human  agencies  combined. 
As  the  number  of  preachers  was  insufficient  to  give 
one  to  each  congregation,  it  became  necessary  for 
one  preacher  to  take  charge  of  several  churches 
and  travel  from  one  place  to  another.  He  also  at 
times  organized  new  congregations.  The  circuit- 
rider  was  generally  a  man  of  great  bravery,  and 
was  ready  to  face  death  at  any  time  in  order  to 
advance  the  cause  of  religion  and  to  save  a  soul. 
He  was  not  often  a  man  of  much  learning,  but  he 
was  pure  as  a  child  and  kind  and  gentle.  Frequent 
mention  is  made  by  some  of  the  early  writers  of  the 
circuit-rider,  with  his  saddlebags,  on  a  rawboned 
horse,  plodding  unconcernedly  through  a  forest 
where  a  bullet  from  an  Indian  gun  might  at  any 
minute  bring  him  to  his  death." 
.  k  '  In  connection  with  the  establishment  of  churches 
^tj"  it  is  a  significant  fact  that  the  Roman  Catholics 
f^,  never  gained  much  ground  among  these  mountain 
people.  However,  in  the  opinion  of  the  writer  they 
are  gaining  more  now  than  ever  before.  They 
are  establishing  little  missions,  with  the  hope  of 
making  them  larger,  wherever  they  can  get  a  few 
souls.  In  the  rapidly  growing  towns  they  seek  to 
be  ready  for  the  newcomers  from  the  North  and 
East.  In  some  sections  they  send  out  literature 
soliciting  financial  aid  for  what  they  term  a  worthy 
and  needy  mission  field.  |A11  they  say  may  be  true, 
but  if  you  are  afraid  of  Romanism  get  ready  to 
combat  it  at  once,  and  first  of  all  and  more  effec- 
tively where  it  finds  virgin  soil,  i 


CHAPTER  II 
Where  They  Live 

A  clear  estimate  of  any  people  cannot  be 
formed  without  a  tcnowledge  of  the  natural  features 
by  which  they  are  surrounded.  Topography  often 
has  as  much  to  do  with  the  formation  of  character 
as  racial  inheritances.  A  man  cannot  be  correctly 
estimated  unless  the  mountains  that  encompassed 
him  or  the  plains  that  spread  out  before  his  feet 
or  the  rivers  that  nourished  his  vegetation  are 
known  and  measured.  It  may  be  that  he  dwells  on 
the  highland,  where  the  cool  breezes  of  summer  are 
but  little  more  than  the  breath  of  winter;  or  that 
his  abode  is  in  the  valley,  where  the  rudest  blast 
from  the  fiercest  storms  never  reaches  his  humble 
but  homelike  cabin.  Perchance  he  dwells  among 
the  fertile  prairies  or  rolling  lands  of  the  great 
West,  whose  virgin  soil  renders  him  independent 
so  far  as  the  goods  of  this  world  are  concerned. 
But  all  these  things  are  character-making  elements. 

Any  good  geography  will  show  the  natural 
features  of  North  America  by  the  relief  maps.  The 
Southern  Appalachians  are  seen  to  be  well  supplied 
with  water  whose  drainage  is  most  excellent.  The 
streams  shown  on  the  relief  maps  are  perhaps  the 
least  important  save  as  a  sort  of  receiving  canal 
for  the  other  and  smaller  streams.  In  the  thou- 
sands of  valleys  to  be  found  among  these  moun- 
tains it  is  doubtful  if  you  find  one  five  miles  long 
destitute  of  running  water  in  some  form.     Some-> 

19 


20  The  Highlanders  of  the  South 

times  it  is  a  rapidly  flowing  stream  having  its 
source  at  tlie  head  of  the  valley,  or,  as  sometimes 
occurs,  far  up  on  the  mountain  side  gushing  forth 
in  purity  and  abundance.  And  it  may  be  right 
here  that  an  illicit  distillery  exists  and  "moonshine" 
whisky  may  flow  as  freely  and  almost  as  abun- 
dantly as  the  crystal  water. 

In  this  Appalachian  system  of  about  175,000 
sqtiare  miles  there  dwell  some  four  or  five  millions 
of  people  who  are  essentially  like  other  folks,  and 
who  are  first  of  all  patriotic.  A  century  and  a 
half  ago  this  was  practically  an  unbroken  forest. 
No  one  east  at  that  time  thought  habitation  in  these 
mountains  possible,  much  less  probable.  It  is  re- 
membered that  General  Washington  declared  that 
if  the  British  should  defeat  him  in  the  valleys  of 
the  New  England  rivers  and  elsewhere  he  would 
take  his  handful  of  troops  beyond  the  Alleghanies 
and  there  forever  defy  approach. 

The  Father  of  his  Country  was  by  no  means 
alone  in  regarding  the  Appalachians  as  the  natural 
western  limit  of  the  country,  and  the  formidable 
limit  of  all  progress  in  the  direction  of  the  setting 
sun.  It  would  not  be  expected  that  a  system  of 
mountains  so  large  even  as  to  have  its  northern 
origin  in  Newfoundland  and  its  southern  disap- 
pearance among  the  hills  of  northern  Alabama 
would  be  a  barrier  to  men  who  braved  the  Atlantic 
for  conscience'  sake.  Even  larger  barriers  would 
not  have  deterred  them.  As  population  increased 
and  men  desired  more  forest  area  passes  were 
found  in  the  mountains  and  the  way  was  opened 
for  the  pioneer,  the  advance  guard  of  civilization. 
Daniel  Boone,  the  noted  hunter  and  trapper,  and 


"Where  Tliey  Live  2\ 

others  of  his  kind  who  could  not  endure  a  neighbor 
so  close  as  five  miles  kept  up  a  constant  search  for 
new  and  untried  hunting  grounds.  It  was  often 
the  purpose  of  the  settlers  to  make  for  themselves  a 
little  place  of  their  own  and  discourage  others 
from  taking  land  near  by,  thus  reserving  fertile 
spots  for  their  own  kith  and  kin. 

The  mountains  are  not  always  high ;  nor  are  the 
valleys  always  deep.  Taking  the  Appalachians  as 
a  whole,  they  vary  from  a  few  hundred  feet  above 
sea  level  to  the  lofty  height  of  almost  seven  thou- 
sand feet,  as  seen  in  Clingman's  Dome,  Mount 
Mitchell,  and  others.  It  is  true  that  habitations 
are  not  found  at  many  places  on  these  highest 
peaks,  yet  Cloudland,  6,394  feet  in  height,  is  a 
great  summer  resort,  and  people  do  live  there 
through  the  winter.  The  hotel  here  is  built 
directly  across  the  surveyed  line  between  the  States 
of  North  Carolina  and  Tennessee. 

From  some  of  these  mountain  streams  the  smaller 
towns  and  cities  get  their  water  supply,  and  that 
abundantly,  of  the  purest  water  known.  We  know 
one  little  town  whose  supply  of  water  comes  from 
a  mountain  spring  the  estimated  capacity  of  which 
is  ten  million  gallons  daily.  Another  use  of  these 
rapidly  flowing  streams  is  to  turn  small  corn  mills 
grinding  perhaps  ten  to  twenty  bushels  of  meal 
per  day.  A  few  turn  roller  flouring  mills,  but  the 
trade  is  almost  entirely  local  custom.  Recent 
devastation  of  forests  by  lumber  dealers  has 
brought  innumerable  steam  saw  mills,  whose  work 
is  not  so  commendable,  because  it  means  not  only  a 
decrease  of  our  Southern  forests  but  the  impover- 
ishment of  the  land  as  well.     Mr.  Graves  and  his 


22  The  Highlanders  of  the  South 

Forestry  Commission  would  do  well  not  merely  to 
pass  through  this  section  touching  only  the  prin- 
cipal cities,  but  they  should  go  deep  into  the  moun- 
tains and  there  see  what  the  onward  march  of  so- 
called  civilization  has  done. 

Aside  from  the  finest  of  hemlock,  poplar,  cherry, 
birch,  oak,  pine,  gum,  walnut,  maple,  and  almost 
every  other  species  of  timber  found  on  this  conti- 
nent, many  herbs  of  medicinal  properties  grow  in 
abundance  in  these  regions — even  to  this  day  the 
"yarb  doctor"  is  not  so  uncommon — ginseng,  called 
"sang"  by  the  m.ountain  people ;  mandrake  or  may 
apple,  mullein,  wild  indigo,  lady's  slipper,  black 
snakeroot,  burdock,  lobelia,  Poor  Robinson's  to- 
bacco, catnip,  and  many  other  herbs  the  essences 
of  which  are  often  used  as  simple  remedies  by  these 
people,  and  frequently  with  more  effect  than  "doc- 
tor stuff,"  as  the  people  sometimes  derisively  refer 
to  the  medicine  given  by  practicing  physicians. 

Many  of  the  useful  minerals  and  some  of  the 
precious  metals  are  found  in  these  mountains.  Not 
infrequently  stories  are  told  of  men  who  mine  their 
own  lead  and  run  their  own  bullets  in  the  hand- 
ladle  for  the  old-fashioned  "bear  gun"  or  smaller 
squirrel  rifle.  Iron  ore  is  perhaps  the  most  abun- 
dant of  the  minerals  found.  The  ore  produced  from 
the  mines  of  these  mountains  is  said  to  be  the 
finest  in  the  United  States.  In  one  of  these 
valleys  there  are  ridges  containing  seemingly  an 
inexhaustible  supply  of  iron  ore  assaying  ninety-six 
per  cent  pure  iron,  said  to  be  the  richest  known  out- 
side of  Denmark.  Nothing  need  be  said  of  the 
Virginia  coal  fields.  Their  riches  are  too  widely 
known    to    need    comment    here.      Much    zinc    is 


Where  They  Live  23 

found,  but  not  in  pockets  such  as  to  be  of  great 
value.  Copper  is  found  in  some  of  the  States,  and 
the  mines  therein  worked  to  advantage,  as  at  the 
famous  Ducktown  or  Copperhill  mines  in  Tennes- 
see. Phosphate  beds  are  so  abundant  as  to  be 
making  men  rich.  No  finer  marble  is  in  the 
country  than  here.  Tennessee  building  stone  is 
famous  throughout  the  nation.  Land  plaster  (g>'p- 
sum)  has  made  many  a  poor  farmer  wealthy 
despite  his  ignorance.  Mica,  feldspar,  hematite, 
and  barytes  are  some  of  the  many  other  useful 
minerals  found.  Traces  of  gold  and  silver  are 
here,  but  not  more  than  a  few  hundred  thousand 
dollars'  worth  of  these  metals  have  been  mined. 
They  do  not  occur  in  great  abundance. 

Every  stranger  coming  here  is  delighted  with 
the  sublime  scenery.  Bishop  Foster  did  not  hesi- 
tate to  say  that  it  is  as  grand  as  any  in  the  Alpine 
regions.  Others  have  testified  to  the  gtandeuh" 
being  unsurpassed  by  the  Rockies  and  other  famous 
regions.  There  are  many  varieties  of  valleys  and 
hills  occasioned  by  the  numerous  forms  of  the 
mountains  themselves.  It  is  no  uncommon  thing 
to  be  on  some  of  these  high  peaks  basking  in  the 
sunshine  while  just  below  you  a  few  hundred  yards 
may  be  a  heavy  cloud  drenching  any  mountain 
climber  next  below  it.  "The  Battle  above  the 
Clouds"  is  no  m)i:h. 

The  climate  is  most  salubrious.  People  live  to  a 
great  age  in  these  mountains.  Their  vigor  and 
agility  are  wonderful.  We  know  a  man  in  his 
ninety-sixth  year  who  frequently  shaves  himself, 
and  has  no  trouble  to  walk  without  a  cane.  The 
story   is   told  of  a   Northerner  coming   South    in 


24  The  Highlanders  of  the  South 

search  of  health,  and,  finding  what  appeared  a 
dehghtful  place  in  the  mountains  near  Asheville, 
he  was  about  to  engage  lodging  when  he  came 
in  contact  with  one  of  the  natives  in  the  front  yard 
of  his  own  household.  The  native  was  shedding 
tears  as  if  in  great  pain,  though  he  was  to  all  ap- 
pearance threescore  and  ten.  The  stranger  ac- 
costed him  to  know  the  cause  of  his  distress  when 
the  following  conversation  took  place,  as  we  have 
it: 

"What  is  the  cause  of  your  distress,  my  friend?" 
said  the  kindly  disposed  stranger. 

"Pap  whopped  me,"  replied  the  native. 

"Good  gracious,  man,  where  is  your  father?" 

"Up  in  the  loft  puttin'  granddad  ter  bed,"  was 
the   characteristic    reply. 

Thus  you  see  people  never  die  in  these  moun- 
tains. Without  more  levity,  it  is  more  evident 
every  year  that  eventually  many  parts  of  these 
mountains  will  be  utilized  for  the  erection  of 
sanitariums  for  the  treatment  of  consumption, 
tuberculosis,  bronchitis,  and  catarrhal  diseases. 

With  all  these  attractions,  the  habitat  of  the 
Southern  Highlander  is  yet  one  of  seclusion  and 
retirement.  He  really  has  not  much  ambition  to 
change  it.  But  once  he  goes  a-roaming  he  may 
stay  away  for  years.  In  some  places  he  resents  the 
coming  of  the  locomotive,  and  looks  upon  so  tame 
a  thing  as  a  pike  road  as  an  intrusion  into  his  right- 
ful domain.  In  many  counties  not  a  railroad  has 
gone,  and  may  not  go  for  years.  The  narrow 
mountain  public  roads  are  often  impassable  in 
winter  and  the  rainy  season  of  the  spring.  Even 
horsemen  have  a  difficult  time  to  get  across  the 


Where  They  Live  25 

mountains  at  such  times.  The  only  sure  way  is  on 
foot,  and  then  you  may  be  stopped  by  swollen 
streams,  fallen  trees,  or  other  barriers.  The  bridle 
path  is  the  most  convenient  and  safest  of  all  the 
roads. 

Thus  has  the  horizon  of  the  mountaineer  been 
limited  by  the  surrounding  mountain  tops  and  the 
heads  of  the  valleys  in  which  his  humble  dwelling 
has  been  located.  His  has  been  a  time  of  rest 
and  peace  and  quiet.    Has  he  profited  by  it? 


CHAPTER  III 
Their  Characteristics 

If  you  should  see  a  man  make  the  sign  of  the 
cross  before  eating  you  would  not  need  to  ask  his 
religion ;  if  you  should  hear  him  say  "hadn't  ought 
a  done  that,"  or  "Cunnel  Johnson,  suh,  of  Geo'gia," 
you  would  at  once  recognize  his  home  section. 
In  the  same  way  would  you  know  the  mountain 
man  by  the  way  he  talks,  acts,  and  has  his 
being. 

It  does  not  seem  out  of  place  to  put  loyalty  as 
the  first  of  the  characteristics  by  which  a  man  of 
the  Southern  Appalachians  should  be  known.  He 
may  not  have  any  Indian  blood  in  his  veins,  but 
loyalty,  to  him,  can  have  but  one  meaning,  and  that 
never  to  forget  either  friend  or  foe.  Likes  and 
dislikes  without  any  logical  reason  save  that  of  an 
unreasoning  prejudice  have  cost  many  a  man  his 
county  office  and  many  a  church  its  opening  wedge 
into  a  community  needing  the  influence  only  a 
church  could  give.  It  is  an  old  saying  that  if  a 
mountaineer  likes  you  he  will  die  for  you,  and  if 
he  dislikes  you  you  w^ill  in  all  probability  die  for 
him.  The  writer  fears  this  is  all  too  true.  Many 
a  time  has  this  loyal  mountaineer  been  known  to 
travel  miles  on  foot,  enduring  severe  cold  and 
pain  and  often  hunger,  to  warn  a  friend  thought 
to  be  in  danger.  Doubtless  he  would  be  just  as 
zealous  in  the  pursuit  of  an  enemy.  He  has  been 
known  to  divide  his  last  morsel  of  food  with  a  way- 

26 


Their  Characteristics  27 

faring  man,  be  he  stranger  or  acquaintance.  What 
greater  loyalty  could  one  find  anywhere? 

He  is  essentially  a  man  of  the  woods,  and  prefers 
that  his  surroundings  be  such.  "Store  clothes" 
may  have  come  to  many  of  these  people,  but  the 
real  mountain  man  prefers  his  "double  Dutch 
breeches"  and  his  brogan  shoes  tied  with  ground- 
hog hide;  while  his  wife,  warm-hearted  soul  that 
she  is,  wants  her  "linsey-worsted"  basque-and- 
overskirt  set  ofif  with  a  little  "breakfast  shawl"  and 
a  large  kerchief  bound  over  her  head.  Glowing 
colors  appeal  to  the  hardy  and  simple-hearted 
mountaineers  almost  as  much  as  to  the  aboriginal 
tribes  on  other  continents  of  which  we  hear  so 
much  from  traders  and  travelers.  You  often  see 
the  mountain  youth  with  a  red  handkerchief  about 
his  neck,  and  if  it  is  silk  in  quality  and  deep  red 
in  color  he  is  more  the  envy  of  his  fellows.  Not 
less  pleasing  are  these  fast  colors  to  the  feminine 
part  of  the  inhabitants,  bright  red  and  deep  blue 
being  their  favorite  colors.  If  you  doubt  this  just 
examine  the  calicoes  and  notions  in  a  mountain 
country  store.  It  often  matters  not  whether  the 
colors  are  fast  or  merely  passing.  The  present 
show  is  sufficient  to  sell  the  goods,  and  that  is  all 
for  which  either  the  merchant  or  the  customer 
seems  to  care.  Shirts,  trousers,  coat,  shoes,  socks, 
and  hat  constitute  the  wardrobe  of  the  average 
Southern  mountaineer.  Very  few  of  them  wear 
underclothes.  They  are  hardy,  and  nearly  all  of 
them  have  early  in  life  been  subjected  to  some  kind 
of  hardening  process  so  that  they  do  not  mind 
what  many  of  us  would  term  severe  hardships. 

Unkemptness,  to  coin  a  word,  would  perhaps  be 


28  TTic  Highlanders  of  the  South 

another  characteristic  of  this  son  of  the  forest. 
The  longer  he  wears  his  hair,  and  the  more  un- 
combed, the  more  of  a  mountain  man  is  he.  Just 
a  few  weeks  ago  the  writer  saw  a  mountaineer  come 
in  astride  of  one  of  four  mules  drawing  a  lumber 
wagon.  On  his  head  was  the  characteristic  black 
slouch  hat  covering  long,  flowing  locks  of  hair  as 
black  as  the  hat.  His  face  had  not  seen  razor  or 
scissors  in  months.  Would  you  be  surprised  to 
know  that  this  man  is  a  mountain  correspondent  to 
a  county  newspaper?  Plis  letters  are  not  silly, 
by  any  means,  but  contain  good  sense  in  many 
instances.  Of  course,  they  need  some  editorial  cor- 
rection, but  they  are  much  better  than  no  letters. 
,  This  man  is  a  typical  mountaineer. 

I  was  about  to  say  illiteracy  is  another  char- 
acteristic, but  I  shall  reserve  the  discussion  on  that 
for  another  chapter.  I  think  it  but  fair  to  say 
that  the  average  mountaineer  uses  tobacco  in  some 
way;  usually  it  is  in  all  the  ways  known  to  man. 
And  he  knows  not  when  he  began  to  use  it.  He 
chews,  smokes,  snuflfs,  and  doubtless  sometimes 
eats  the  weed.  Yes,  and  he  drinks  the  product  of 
his  still,  too.  And  he  will  swear  some  if  he  has 
occasion.  But  these  also  are  to  be  saved  for  a 
later  chapter. 

With  all  these  seemingly  conflicting  character- 
istics, he  is  kind,  warm-hearted,  cheerful,  friendly, 
amiable,  and  gentle  as  a  child.  He  will  go  out  of 
his  way  to  do  you  a  favor,  and  you  can  count  him 
a  "square  man"  every  day  in  the  week.  He  will 
go  with  you  to  the  last  ditch,  and  cross  it  with  you 
if  you  need  him. 


CHAPTER  IV 
Their  Manners  and  Customs 

This  Southern  mountaineer  is  a  queer  mixture 
of  manners  and  brusqueness.  He  would  extend  to 
you  the  hospitality  of  his  home  for  days  at  a 
time,  but  would  resent  any  attempt  on  your  part 
to  introduce  modern  manners  even  in  the  most 
limited  way,  as  the  following  incident  will  show. 
A  gentleman  traveling  in  the  mountains  sought 
shelter  from  the  night  in  the  humble  home  of  one 
of  these  honest  fellows.  He  was  told  that  he  might 
share  the  bed  with  the  teacher  of  the  mountain 
"skule."  The  stranger  graciously  accepted  the 
conditions  and  bade  his  host  a  pleasant  good-night. 
The  next  morning,  thinking  to  continue  in  the 
apparent  good  graces  of  the  owner  of  the  house, 
the  stranger  saluted  him  with  a  cheery  "Good- 
morning,  sir." 

"I  staid  hyar  last  night,  tew;  yer  needn't  be 
speakin'  ter  me,  stranger." 

And  the  good  old  mountaineer  meant  just  what 
he  said.  No  ceremonies  for  him.  He  had  spoken 
words  of  greeting  upon  the  arrival  of  the  stranger 
the  afternoon  before,  and  they  were  enough 
for  him  even  though  the  visitor  should  remain 
a  guest  a  whole  week.  No  unnecessary  use  of 
words  for  him.  One  greeting  was  sufficient  for 
all  time. 

The  mountaineer's  manners  are  brusque  and 
often  blunt,  but  beneath  the  rough  exterior  there 

29 


30  The  Highlanders  of  the  South 

beats  the  kindliest  heart  kept  in  the  warmest 
breast  any  man  ever  knew. 

Sensitive,  too,  is  this  man  whose  Hfe  is  often  one 
of  isolation  and  seclusion.  Poverty  seldom  has  a 
thick  skin.  Let  this  Highlander  of  the  South  but 
think  you  look  upon  him  as  one  not  up  to  the  best 
as  the  outside  world  calls  the  best,  and  from  that 
moment  his  manner  toward  you  is  cold  and  indififer- 
ent,  if  not  impolite.  No  man — not  even  an  Indian 
— can  show  more  indifference  and  utter  uncon- 
cern for  present  people  and  things  than  can  this 
mountaineer  when  he  so  chooses.  A  man  at  no 
court,  be  he  plenipotentiary  or  a  mere  attache, 
needs  more  diplomacy  and  tact  and  ability  than 
does  the  man  who  comes  to  reach  this  untutored 
child  who  has  within  him  so  much  latent  force, 
strong  and  vigorous  but  undeveloped.  Approach 
him  in  the  right  way  and  you  forever  have  the  key 
to  his  life,  his  habits,  his  hopes,  his  ambitions,  and 
all  that  he  holds  dear.  But  approach  him  without 
skill,  foresight,  and  judgment,  and  you  are  at  once 
tightly  barred  from  ever  gaining  this  entrance  so 
much  sought  and  so  badly  needed. 

In  his  habits,  manners,  and  customs  he  is  almost 
primitive.  The  hand  loom  is  by  no  means  a  thing 
of  the  past ;  nor  is  the  hand  grater  for  making  corn 
meal.  The  geared  or  yoked  oxen  may  be  seen  at- 
tached to  a  wooden  plow.  You  can  yet  find  the 
puncheon  floor  and  buildings  covered  with  boards 
held  on  by  poles  and  logs  and  even  rocks.  Crude 
utensils  for  tilling  the  soil  may  yet  be  found.  Many 
horseshoes  and  plow  points — "bull  tongues" — are 
made  in  the  ordinary  blacksmith  shop  or  forge. 
Split  baskets  and  splitbottom  chairs  are  made  by 


Their  Manners  and  Customs  3 1 

these  people,  and  they  decorate  their  baskets  with 
gay  colors  made  from  their  own  compound  of 
bark,  ooze,  and  wood  coloring.  Not  a  few  make 
their  own  shoes,  and  almost  all  stockings  are  home- 
knit.  Leather  is  tanned  often  at  a  little  bark  yard 
whose  capacity  is  from  one  to  ten  hides  per  day  or 
less.  Harness  or  "gears,"  saddles,  and  other  out- 
fits for  horses  are  made  at  home  by  the  oil  lamp, 
or  perhaps  oftener  by  the  light  from  the  pine  torch. 
He  gets  his  meal  at  the  little  mountain  mill,  and  his 
flour,  the  little  he  uses,  at  a  river  mill  some  dis- 
tance from  home.  When  it  comes  to  a  question  of 
milling  he  usually  carries  his  grist  on  his  shoulders 
to  the  mill  and  returns  with  it  in  the  same  manner. 
His  meat  or  bacon  he  raises  himself,  seldom 
butchering  anything  but  a  "razorback,"  a  term  sug- 
gested by  the  thinness  of  the  animal  and  also  by 
the  length  of  its  nose.  Needless  to  say  that  this 
species  of  swine  is  of  mixed  blood.  He  comes  to 
his  present  state,  however,  largely  by  lack  of  care. 
Never  does  he  get  any  food  save  acorns  and  chest- 
nuts and  fruit  from  such  other  trees  as  the  woods 
of  the  hills  and  mountains  afford.  From  this  for- 
aging direct  is  the  hog  butchered  and  used  for 
food.  Now  and  then  he  is  fed  for  a  week  or  two 
before  going  to  grace  the  table  of  this  man  who 
likes  his  corn  pone  and  bacon. 

Our  mountaineer  is  a  great  lover  of  fun.  Per- 
haps nothing  keeps  him  from  sleep.  Responsibil- 
ities rest  lightly  upon  his  shoulders.  If  he  has  a 
neighbor  a  mile  away  he  is  happy.  One  in  speak- 
ing distance  would  make  him  no  happier.  No  ten- 
cent  moving-picture  performance  or  magic-lantern 
show  comes  close  without  getting  him  for  a  patron. 


32  The  Highlanders  of  the  South 

He  also  goes  to  the  county  site  to  see  the  circus. 
It  is  interesting  on  "show  day"  to  watch  them  come 
in  all  sorts  of  conveyances,  from  the  pedestrian  to 
the  wagon  drawn  by  mules,  horses,  or  oxen.  Not 
infrequently  will  you  see  one  ox  hooked  to  a  wagon 
taking  the  mountaineer  and  his  family  to  see  the 
elephant.  Here  again  you  see  the  prevalence  of 
gay,  gaudy  colors.  This  mountain  man  will  spend 
all  his  savings  at  the  circus.  Sometimes  he  is 
caught  by  the  "three  pea"  man;  again  it  is  the 
"wheel."  He  is  great  to  take  a  game  of  chance. 
He  will  also  "take  in"  the  big  circus.  Recently  a 
showman  exhibiting  in  this  mountain  territory, 
after  a  prosperous  day,  remarked,  "There  are 
more  fools  and  fifty-cent  pieces  in  this  county  than 
anywhere  we  have  been  save  one  place,"  and 
he  named  a  county  in  another  mountain  State. 
If  our  mountain  friend  has  meal  enough  for  a 
day  or  two  he  is  not  going  to  worry  about  the 
rest.  He  believes  in  letting  every  day  provide 
for  itself. 

In  the  heart  of  these  mountains  you  find  the  old- 
fashioned  wood-chopping  and  "quilting  bee"  where 
the  men  cut  wood  and  the  women  quilt.  In  the 
afternoon  or  evening  the  young  folks  gather  for 
what  they  ordinarily  term  a  "frolic,"  meaning  a 
gathering  where  they  are  free  to  play  all  sorts  of 
games,  often  dancing  to  the  music  of  the  violin  or 
banjo.  The  man  who  plays  the  fiddle  or  picks  the 
banjo  is  the  hero  of  the  occasion.  He  bears  his 
honors  lightly,  but  the  flaming  red  silk  kerchief 
inartistically  knotted  at  the  throat  together  with 
his  musical  instrument  is  his  badge  of  authority. 
Everyone  present  looks  up  to  him.     He  is  usually 


Their  Manners  and  Customs  33 

the  most  dignified  person  present,  seldom  speaking 
unless  spoken  to. 

It  is  also  the  custom  of  these  mountain  folk  to 
want  to  know  all  about  any  newcomer  or  stranger 
who  may  be  passing  through.  We  have  known 
them  to  ask  the  traveler  who  he  was,  his  business  in 
that  part  of  the  country,  and  whether  or  not  he 
meant  to  remain  in  the  settlement  overnight.  We 
knew  one  of  the  women  to  ask  one  of  our  Home 
Missionary  women  who  happened  by  accident  to 
be  her  traveling  companion  how  long  she  meant  to 
stay,  and  what  was  her  business,  and  she  capped  the 
conversation  by  saying,  "An'  what  did  ye  brung 
with  ye?" 

Right  here  we  might  say  a  word  about  what  this 
man  eats.  He  is  not  very  choice  of  food.  Nor  is 
he  particular  as  to  the  quality  of  the  cooking.  The 
women  resent  the  coming  of  the  cooking  school, 
and  think  if  they  cook  like  their  mothers  it  ought  to 
be  good  enough  for  anyone.  The  writer  visited  a 
District  Conference  in  one  of  these  mountain  dis- 
tricts in  an  official  capacity.  He  was  assigned  to 
the  home  in  which  the  district  superintendent — then 
called  presiding  elder,  locally,  "The  Elder" — was 
being  entertained.  It  was,  of  course,  considered 
the  best  home  in  that  community.  There  was  not 
a  carpet  on  the  floor.  The  women  of  the  house 
wore  no  shoes — went  barefoot.  Our  food  was 
corn  pone  and  poorly  baked  flour  pone,  cane  mo- 
lasses, meat  broiled  until  it  swam  in  its  own  grease, 
a  thick-crusted  pie,  and  some  sort  of  jelly  which 
shall  be  nameless.  No  greater  work  can  be  done 
by  any  Church  than  to  improve  the  culinary  habits 
of  these  people. 


CHAPTER  V 

What  They  Do 

I  DO  not  want  to  say  that  this  man  is  lazy  or 
indolent  or  shiftless,  for  he  is  not  exactly  either 
of  these,  but  rather  a  combination  of  all.  A  few 
years  ago  the  writer  of  this  said  in  the  columns  of 
a  Southern  magazine  that  the  average  man  of  the 
South  does  not  actually  work  more  than  half  the 
time.  That  statement  has  not  been  contradicted. 
This  applies  all  over  the  South,  and  is  no  more  true 
of  the  man  of  the  mountains  than  of  the  man  who 
dwells  in  the  fertile  valleys  away  from  any  moun- 
tains at  all.  Some  think  that  genius  is  the  result 
of  rest,  being  accumulated  by  atavism  through  suc- 
cessive generations.  If  this  be  true  the  South,  in 
the  opinion  of  the  writer,  should  produce  more 
geniuses  than  any  part  of  the  country ;  for  we  do 
rest.  There  are  such  extremes  of  poverty  and 
wealth,  ignorance  and  culture,  in  the  South  that  it 
is  difficult  to  classify  them  properly  for  all  classes. 
You  find  the  wealthy  landowner  dwelling  in  an 
elegant  house  on  a  farm  or  plantation  of  several 
hundred  acres  while  his  nearest  neighbor,  usually 
neighbors,  may  live  in  a  hovel  on  the  same  farm 
surrounded  by  dirt  and  squalor  of  the  worst  sort. 
It  is  of  the  dweller  in  the  hovel  we  wish  to  write. 
His  life,  his  surroundings,  his  temptations  we  de- 
sire to  reach  and  help.  Not  that  the  other  fellow 
doesn't  need  help,  but  he  is  able  to  help  himself. 
He  knows  the  things  he  needs,  but  for  generations 
34 


What  They  Do  35 

his  people  have  been  hoarders  of  dollars  or  hoarders 
of  remnants  of  blue-blooded  aristocracy.  They  will 
let  go  of  neither.  One  is  as  great  an  evil  as  the 
other.  There  is  absolutely  no  sympathy  between 
this  hoarder  of  aristocratic  ancestry  and  the  poor 
hovel  dweller.     But  more  of  that  later. 

Shall  we  call  him  a  day  laborer?  I  suppose  so. 
That  is  about  the  way  most  of  them  live.  They  are 
witty,  quick  to  see,  but  look  with  wonder  upon 
education  and  scholarship.  We  have  seen  them 
open  their  eyes  in  astonishment  when  told  that  one 
can  read  two  lines  at  a  time  or  peruse  an  ordinary 
novel  in  a  few  hours.  It  is  not  always  the  day 
laborer  who  is  so  amazed.  Sometimes  it  is  the 
mountaineer  who  owns  some  hundreds  of  acres 
of  rock,  gravel,  and  scrubby  trees  and  calls  it  a 
cattle  range  or  sheep  ranch. 

A  generation  ago  these  people  tilled  the  soil  in 
a  small  way,  making  their  living  selling  a  little  com, 
a  little  wheat,  now  and  then  a  steer,  or  perchance 
working  by  the  month  for  the  more  successful 
farmer  in  the  lowlands.  It  was  easier  then  than 
now,  because  there  was  a  government  distillery 
every  few  miles  and  the  mountain  farmer  could 
sell  the  corn  raised  in  his  fertile  valley  or  on  his 
rich  hillside  for  a  good  price  within  a  short  distance 
from  his  home.  In  those  days  com  was  about  all 
he  raised.  That  is  the  secret  of  the  practical  fail- 
ure of  the  government  to  break  up  the  illicit  distill- 
ing of  liquor.  Every  few  weeks  now  an  illicit  still 
is  "raided"  by  revenue  officers  and  in  some  cases 
hundreds  of  gallons  of  malt  destroyed.  The 
mountaineer  dwelling  in  the  coves  and  hills  often- 
times declares  that  God  gave  these  things  to  him, 


36  The  Highlanders  of  the  South 

therefore  he  has  a  right  to  use  them  so  as  to  make 
a  hving  the  easiest  way.  Do  you  think  these  moun- 
tains need  mission  work?  If  it  were  not  claiming 
his  inalienable  right  to  make  whisky  without  pay- 
ing revenue  he  would  be  claiming  some  other  so- 
called  inalienable  right,  for  his  chief  right  seems 
to  be  following  the  line  of  least  resistance. 

Now  that  the  government  is  making  strenuous 
efforts  to  stop  illicit  distilling  and  "moonshining" 
this  hardy  mountaineer  must  look  elsewhere  for  a 
living.  Sometimes  he  hunts.  Some  dig  ginseng 
and  other  herbs,  marketing  them  at  the  nearest 
store.  Others  gather  chestnuts  in  season,  peel  tan 
bark,  or  do  anything  else  that  presents  itself. 
Suffice  it  to  say  that  most  of  them  do  not  work 
when  they  have  rations  ahead  for  a  day  or  two. 

In  recent  years  much  of  the  timber  is  being 
sawed  and  marketed.  This  gives  employment  to 
all  who  care  to  work.  With  timber  marketing  has 
come  increased  price  for  unskilled  labor.  Formerly 
fifty  or  seventy-five  cents  was  counted  a  good  price 
for  day  labor.  Now  it  is  usually  one  dollar.  This 
is  true,  however,  only  of  the  saw  yards  and  logging 
camps.  On  the  farms  the  price  remains  low.  Some 
laborers — and  they  are  not  all  negroes  either — may 
be  had  for  fifty  cents  or  less,  and  they  board  them- 
selves. 

Given  a  chance  they  become  fairly  good  car- 
penters or  blacksmiths  or  masons,  but  usually  do 
not  accumulate  wealth  to  any  extent.  Very  few  of 
them  become  contractors  even  in  the  least  sense  of 
that  word.  To  become  contractors  they  must 
think,  and  that  is  hard  work,  and  yet  you  cannot 
beat  one  of  them  in  a  trade. 


What  They  Do  37 

Many  of  these  people  own  their  own  homes — a 
small  house  and  a  lot  but  little  larger.  Some  are 
fair  renters ;  that  is,  they  farm  several  acres  of 
another  man's  land.  They  sometimes  get  out  to  the 
lowlands  and  there  rent.  Most  of  the  people 
referred  to  in  this  chapter  belong  to  the  class  al- 
most wholly  illiterate.  They  do  not  accumulate 
property  because  they  cannot  calculate.  Need  I 
ask,  Do  they  need  mission  work  or  Church  Ex- 
tension aid? 


CHAPTER  VI 
Their  Service 

Before  we  enter  upon  a  more  technical  discus- 
sion of  the  various  conditions  of  this  Southerner 
not  aforementioned  we  deem  it  wise  to  speak  of 
his  service  to  his  country. 

"If  we  take  the  term  Southern  mountaineers  in 
its  broader  extent,  all  must  agree  that  the  service 
rendered  the  nation  by  the  mountaineers  of  the 
South  has  been  a  notable  one."^ 

Men  like  Boone,  Crockett,  Sevier,  Bean,  Robert- 
son, the  Shelbys,  the  Donelsons,  the  Doaks,  the 
Carters,  and  the  Bledsoes  did  an  untold  and  an  al- 
most unheralded  good  as  those  who  blazed  the 
way  for  the  coming  of  civilization.  They  not  only 
did  good  as  frontiersmen,  but  later  they  helped  the 
infant  republic  to  hold  its  own  against  the  on- 
slaughts of  the  British.  True,  these  men  were 
usually  clad  in  buckskin  and  bearing  their  trusty 
rifles,  but  no  one  doubted  either  their  courage  or 
their  aim.  Fearless  as  tigers,  they  were  as  brave 
as  lions.  Often  they  took  their  lives  in  their  hands 
and  went  in  defense  of  the  weak  or  to  open  un- 
trodden paths  that  the  women  and  children  might 
follow.  After  his  little  cabin  was  built  and  his 
small  field  cleared  he  had  to  be  constantly  on  guard 
in  the  cultivation  of  his  crops.  If  he  but  went  to 
the  spring  half  a  hundred  yards  away  for  a 
bucket  of  water  he  must  take  with  him  his  trusty 

'  President  S.  T.  Wilson,  The  Southern  Mountaineers,  p.  23. 
38 


Their  Service  39 

rifle.  He  plowed,  or  rather  dug,  and  hoed  corn 
with  this  same  rifle  slung  across  his  manly 
shoulders.  Later  when  he  must  sell  the  fur  prod- 
ucts of  the  winter,  or  procure  ammunition  and 
necessary  clothing  and  articles  of  food,  he  must 
go  by  stealth  to  the  nearest  trading  post,  usually  a 
fort,  and  there  purchase  needed  supplies,  always 
going  and  coming  at  the  imminent  risk  of  his  life. 

You  can  safely  say  that  individually  and  col- 
lectively the  people  of  the  South  are  patriotic,  and 
that  they  believe  in  the  true  God.  Anarchy  and 
infidelity  are  practically  unknown  to  the  native 
Southerner.  His  ancestors  carried  the  Book  with 
them,  and  he  has  ever  found  it  good  enough  for 
him.  His  ideas  of  God,  Providence,  and  subjects 
of  a  like  nature  may  be  vague  and  regarded  as 
superstitious  by  some,  but  he  is  true  to  them  and 
mayhap  his  superstition  helps  him  in  being  faith- 
ful. Likewise  his  fathers  carried  the  law  with 
them.  It  was  held  as  sacred  as  the  Book  itself.  In 
most  instances  the  Book  was  law  and  is  yet.  The 
mountain  countr\'  justice  of  the  peace  often  is 
more  just  in  meting  out  the  law  than  is  the  city 
judge  who  may  have  all  the  appearances  of  learn- 
ing and  wisdom  without  any  of  the  penetration 
counting  for  so  much  in  a  judgment.  We  once 
heard  a  district  attorney  characterize  a  certain 
mountain  country  magistrate  as  being  "able  to  see 
a  point  in  law  through  a  brick  wall."  But  we  are 
not  to  speak  so  much  of  these  things  as  of  actual 
warfare. 

Aside  from  the  early  defenses  against  the  In- 
dians, we  first  find  this  Southern  mountaineer  in 
the  Revolution,  more  particularly  at  the  battle  of 


40  The  Highlanders  of  the  South 

King's  Mountain/  a  cone-shaped  hill  in  Lincoln 
County,  North  Carolina.  Here  the  British  had 
intrenched  themselves  under  the  command  of  Fer- 
guson, who  declared  "the  Almighty  himself  could 
not  drive  him  from  it."  Nine  hundred  chosen  men 
armed  with  rifles  surrounded  the  unbeliever  and 
completely  routed  his  men  after  killing  him.^ 
These  nine  hundred  men  were  chosen  from  the 
riflemen  of  the  mountaineers.  Thomas  Jefiferson 
said  of  this  battle,  "That  memorable  victory  was 
the  annunciation  of  that  turn  of  the  tide  of  suc- 
cess which  terminated  the  Revolutionary  War  with 
the  seal  of  independence. "^ 

These  mountaineers  were  of  great  service  in 
the  Indian  wars.  Long  life  in  the  woods  and  for- 
ests taught  them  to  be  as  crafty  as  the  red  man 
himself.  He  soon  learned  to  imitate  the  Indian's 
decoy  call  for  turkeys  and  other  wild  game.  There 
is  on  record  the  death  of  more  than  one  redskin 
taking  quick  passage  to  the  "happy  hunting 
ground"  while  following  up  the  answer  to  his 
decoy  sound.  The  Campbells,  the  Carters,  the 
Shelbys,  Sevier,  and  Robertson,  with  their  trusty 
mountain  riflemen,  often  outwitted  the  Indian  in  the 
border  warfare  of  that  day.  In  cunning  the  white 
man  may  not  have  been  so  great,  but  in  craftiness 
and  strategy  he  soon  outgrew  him.  Never  in  any 
war,  Indian  or  other,  has  this  mountaineer  failed 
to  respond  to  the  call  of  his  country.  Look  at 
Jackson  in  the  War  of  1812,  and  do  not  forget 
Ensign  Sam  Houston  in  the  same  war.     Think  of 


'  Phelan,  History  of  Tennessee,  p.  jg. 

'  Historians'  History  of  the  World,  vol.  xxiii,  p.  277. 

•  Garrett  and  Goodpasture,  History  of  Tennessee,  p.  86. 


Their  Service  4I 

the  Seminole  War,  and  of  the  Black  Hawk  War, 
in  which  Abraham  Lincoln  and  Jefferson  Davis 
figured  not  without  conspicuousness.  Then  the 
civil  war — who  can  tell  their  value  in  this  great 
struggle  to  preserve  the  liberty  won  more  than  three 
quarters  of  a  century  before?  Some  will  say  that 
the  mountaineers  had  no  use  for  slaves,  therefore 
they  naturally  took  the  opposition ;  others  will  say 
the  mountain  man  was  carried  off  his  feet  by  the 
leadership  of  such  men  as  Andrew  Johnson  and 
William  Gannaway  Brownlow.  True,  these  causes 
had  their  bearing,  but  knowing  the  mountain  man  as 
I  do  it  seems  to  me  that  he  agreed  with  Abraham 
Lincoln  in  the  thought  that  the  one  word  Union 
should  mean  more  than  all  else.  His  ancestors  had 
seen  Ireland  fail  and  become  oppressed  because  her 
brave  leaders  lacked  unity ;  they  had  seen  Scotland 
prevent  oppression  because  of  a  united  leadership.^ 
This  ancestry  had  not  forgotten  to  teach  posterity 
what  unity  meant.  Then,  too,  he  has  always  placed 
his  country  first.  Ignorant  and  illiterate  though  he 
be,  on  questions  of  general  government  this  man 
thinks  with  remarkable  clearness. 

In  the  civil  war  two  congressional  districts  in 
Tennessee,  the  first  and  second,  furnished  more 
volunteers  for  the  Union  service  than  any  district 
in  the  United  States  of  a  like  population.^  Per- 
haps the  most  attractive  thing  about  this  enlisting 
is  that  it  was  almost  entirely  purely  voluntary.  In 
many  instances  the  men  traveled  at  night  in  order 
to  evade  the  Confederate  conscripting  officers  and 
enter  the  Union  armv.     Some  men  became  famous 


1  D.  H.  Montgomery,  English  History,  pp.  117,  118. 

2  See  civil  war  records  of  that  period. 


42  The  Highlanders  of  the  South 

piloting^  refugees  through  the  Confederate  lines  to 
the  Federal  army  and  a  place  of  Union  safety. 
Captain  Daniel  Ellis,  who  died  about  two  years 
ago,  has  a  name  far  more  than  local.  His  book, 
published  by  Harpers,  had  a  wide  sale  and  copies 
of  it  are  now  much  sought  after  by  ex-Federal 
soldiers.  Only  a  short  while  ago  the  writer  pro- 
cured one  for  the  commandant  of  a  State  Soldiers' 
Home  in  a  Northern  State.  Other  men  became 
almost  as  famous  as  did  Captain  Ellis.  By  the  way. 
Captain  Ellis  lived  in  the  same  county^  that  gave 
to  the  nation  General  Samuel  P.  Carter,  who  was 
both  a  naval  and  an  army  officer — the  only  man 
to  bear  such  distinction,  I  am  reliably  informed. 
General  James  Carter,  of  the  regular  army,  comes 
from  the  same  county. 

It  might  not  be  fair  to  say  that  these  men  saved 
the  Union,  but  there  is  no  question  about  their 
doing  much  toward  it.  In  the  far  North  or  the 
far  South  it  was  not  hard  to  be  a  Union  man  or  a 
Confederate,  respectively.  But  on  middle  ground, 
where  lines  were  sharply  drawn,  it  was  a  matter 
of  much  moment,  requiring  no  little  courage  and 
judgment.  That  these  men  never  hesitated  to  strike 
a  blow  for  the  the  Union  is  sufficient  evidence  of 
their  integrity.  But  let  us  say  here  that  "Stone- 
wall" Jackson  was  a  mountain  man. 

The  writer  feels  deeply  his  inability  to  tell  as  it 
should  be  told  the  story  of  these  brave  people.  The 
way  they  fight  for  their  rights  and  privileges  can 
be  told  only  by  one  who  could  fittingly  tell  of  the 
deeds  of  a  Bruce,  a  Wallace,  or  any  Highland  laird 
of  the  olden  times.    Such  names  as  MacNeil,  Mac- 

'  Carter  County,  Tennessee. 


Their  Service  43 

Donald,  MacReynolds,  MacAmis,  Dunbar,  and  also 
other  ''Macs"  tell  without  further  words  what 
might  be  expected  of  such  a  people  bearing  such 
names  and  of  such  ancestry. 

Then  there  is  the  war  of  Cuba's  freedom.  At 
the  first  clarion  call  the  men  of  the  mountains  went 
forth  to  give  their  lives,  if  need  be,  for  the  liberty 
of  the  dusky  brother  on  the  Pearl  of  the  Antilles. 
A  friend  whose  hobby  is  statistics  has  informed  us 
that  one  of  these  mountain  counties^  sent  the  larg- 
est per  cent  of  volunteers  to  this  war  of  any  county 
in  the  United  States. 

To  quote  President  Wilson  again :  "This  chapter 
would  be  incomplete  were  it  not  to  call  attention, 
before  closing,  to  the  service  rendered  their  country 
by  individuals  of  this  mountain  region.  A  mere 
mention  of  a  few  representative  names  will  em- 
phasize the  great  part  that,  in  spite  of  all  their 
seclusion,  the  Appalachians  have  had  in  the  affairs 
of  the  nation.  There  are  the  pioneers  Boone, 
Sevier,  the  Shelbys,  Davy  Crockett,  and  Sam 
Houston ;  the  Presidents  Andrew  Jackson,  James 
K.  Polk,  and  Andrew  Johnson;  the  famous  Con- 
federates Zebulon  B.  Vance,  John  H.  Reagan,  and 
"Stonewall"  Jackson ;  the  renowned  Unionists  Par- 
son Brownlow  and  Admiral  Farragut ;  the  inventor 
Cyrus  H.  McCormick ;  and  the  man  of  the  nation, 
Abraham  Lincoln.  Surely  the  annals  of  the  country 
would  be  the  poorer  were  the  deeds  of  the  men  of 
the  Appalachians  not  found  recorded  in  them." 

'  Greene  County,  Tennesae*. 


CHAPTER  VII 
What  They  Do  Not  Know 

It  may  seem  strange  that  a  people  so  patriotic 
and  so  thoroughly  Protestant  should  be  so  careless 
of  their  mental  training.  Their  illiteracy  is  doubt- 
less more  accidental  than  intentional.  The  writer 
would  naturally  like  to  make  some  plausible  excuse 
for  the  ignorance  and  at  the  same  time  the  inno- 
cence of  this  Southern  mountaineer.  He  would 
feel  more  justifiable  in  making  excuse  if  the  ig- 
norance applied  alone  to  the  mountain  man  of  the 
South.  But  since  it  is  equally  true  of  the  dweller 
on  the  plains  and  on  the  large  plantation  it  seems 
best  to  tell  the  plain  unvarnished  truth.  We  feel 
that  in  very  few  instances  have  the  exact  facts  been 
known.  It  may  not  be  too  much  to  say  that  this  is 
as  important  a  field  for  mission  work  as  some  of  the 
foreign  fields.  We  will  draw  no  conclusion,  but 
tell  the  truth  as  it  is  given  us  to  see  the  truth,  and 
the  reader  may  judge  for  himself. 

It  is  safe  to  say  that  the  greatest  trouble  in  all 
this  land  is  that  the  educational  facilities  provided 
by  the  States  are  wholly  inadequate  for  the  de- 
mands of  the  people.  First  of  all,  they  do  not  reach 
the  people.  In  these  United  States  it  ought  not  to 
be  necessary  for  any  Church  to  educate  the  people, 
especially  before  they  get  through  the  eighth  grade. 
Some  think  a  compulsory  school  law  in  all  the 
States  would  solve  the  problem.  It  probably  would 
help,  but  the  number  of  schoolhouses  would  have 

44 


What  They  Do  Not  Know  45 

to  be  doubled  or  the  ones  now  in  existence  enlarged. 
It  is  the  opinion  of  the  writer  that  the  States  try 
to  cover  too  much  ground  with  the  little  money  they 
now  have.  They  have  money  enough,  perhaps,  to 
do  fairly  good  work  through  five  grades.  Instead 
of  that  they  try  to  go  through  eleven  grades  and  in 
some  instances  twelve.  The  result  is  very  imperfect 
work.    We  should  "lessen  the  denominator." 

Parts  of  the  following  Southern  States  are  in  the 
mountain  region  of  the  South:  Georgia,  Kentucky, 
North  Carolina,  South  Carolina,  Tennessee,  Vir- 
ginia, and  West  Virginia. 

The  following  tables  compiled  from  the  United 
States  Census  of  1900  show  some  things.  The  per 
cent  of  illiteracy  is  for  native  male  citizens  twenty- 
one  years  of  age  and  over,  foreign-born  citizens  and 
negroes  of  the  same  age.  We  take  the  seven 
States  in  which  are  found  the  Southern  Appa- 
lachians or  their  ranges : 

Table  I 


PER    CENT    OP    ILLITERATES 

White        Foreign  white     Negroes 
4 

5 


Georgia 11. 8  5 

Kentucky 14.3  8 

North  Carolina 18.9  5 

South  Carolina 12.3  5 

Tennessee 14  •  i  7 

Virginia 12.2  10 

West  Virginia 10.7  22 


6  56 

6  49 

7  53 
2  54 
7  47 
5  52 
5  37 


Average  totals 13.4  9.4  50.2 

Compare  these  figures  with  those  of  the  United 
States  as  a  whole  and  we  have  the  following:  13.4 
and  4.9;  9.4  and  11.5  ;  50.2  and  47.4.  Only  the  first 
startle.  The  more  enterprising  foreigners  come 
South  as  traders,  peddlers,  and  other  business  men. 


46  The  Highlanders  of  the  South 

Most  of  the  negroes  in  the  United  States  are  in  the 
South.  It  is  the  illiteracy  of  the  white  man  that 
is  so  appalling.  Feel  as  you  please,  the  South  is  a 
white  man's  country  and  will  so  continue  for  untold 
generations.  This  is  as  it  should  be ;  but  this  same 
white  man  should  not  boast  of  his  up-to-dateness 
so  long  as  this  illiteracy  is  extant.  Think  what  an 
illiterate  vote  of  more  than  13  per  cent  of  the  total 
might  mean  under  certain  conditions. 

Of  the  States  named  above,  West  Virginia  and 
Kentucky  have  compulsory  school  laws.  So  have 
North  Carolina  and  Tennessee  in  part.  You  may, 
however,  count  the  compulsory  school  laws  in  these 
States  as  a  farce,  since  they  are  not  enforced  "to 
hurt,"  as  the  httle  boy  said  about  his  father's 
religion. 

To  show  causes  for  the  existence  of  facts  as  given 
in  Table  I  we  give  other  statistics.  Where  not 
otherwise  stated  the  figures  are  for  1906-7  as  given 
in  the  report  of  the  Commissioner  of  Education  for 
the  United  States: 

Table  II 

Per  cent  Per  cent 

of  school  of  enrolled 

population  actually 

'•enrolled  attending 

United  States 69.83  70.26 

Georgia 63.18  62.41* 

Kentucky 72.52*  61.78' 

North  Carolina 70-52^  65.87' 

South  Carolina 61 .66  73-49 

Tennessee 77.41'  69.17' 

Virginia... 58.61  59-55 

West  Virginia 74-96  65.60 

Average  totals 68.4  65.41 

Make  your  own  comparison. 

*  1904-5.  8  1902-3.  '  I9OS-6. 


What  They  Do  Not  Know 


47 


The  following  is  not  void  of  interest : 


Table  III 


Average 

number 

of  days 

school  kept 


United  States 151 


Average 
number 
of  days' 
attendance 
for  all 
pupils 

74.3 


Georgia 118^ 

Kentucky 90 

North  Carolina 95' 

South  Carohna 104  .  5 

Tennessee 116 

Virginia 134 

West  Virginia 127.5 

Average  totals 112.  i 


45-8 
40.3 
40.  i' 

45-5. 
58.7' 
47-2 
62.3 

48.5 


Average 

number 

of  days' 

attendance 

by  each 

gupil 
enrolled 

106.  2 

73-6 
55.6 
57.6^ 

73. S 

80.2' 

80.5 

83.1 


72 


Again  make  your  own  comparison. 
But  what  about  Table  IV?    Examine  it  closely, 
please : 

Table  IV 


United  States. 


Amount 
raised  per 
capita  of 
scholastic 
population 

$14.28 


Amount 
expended 
per  capita 

of  total 
population 


Amount 
expended 
per  cauita 

of  avg. 
attendance 


$3.90  $27.98 


Georgia $3 -03' 

Kentucky 3.60 

North  Carolina 3  .  06^ 

South  Carolina 3.00 

Tennessee 4-77 

Virginia 5.27 

West  Virginia 10.34 


$0.98 
1 .  19' 
1 .09' 
0.96 
1.492 
1.68 
3-07 


$7 
8 

7 
6 

9 
15 
20 


Average  totals $4.72         $1.49  $10.73 

These  four  tables  show  us  some  things  and  in 
part    account    for   the    frightful   illiteracy   of   our 


1904-S. 


2 1902-3. 


•  1905-6. 


48  The  Highlanders  of  the  South 

Southern  people.  However,  the  main  cause  lies, 
like  everything  else,  in  our  unwillingness  to  pay 
the  price.  In  1904  the  United  States  as  a  whole 
expended  for  public  schools  on  each  $100  of  true 
valuation  on  all  real  and  personal  property  25.5 
cents.  These  seven  States  expended  on  the  same 
basis  for  the  same  year  21.6  cents.  It  is  not  neces- 
sary to  call  the  reader's  attention  to  the  fact  that 
we  are  far  behind  the  average  on  other  things  as 
well  as  education.  One  more  fact  should  be  given. 
Not  long  since  the  superintendent  of  public  instruc- 
tion in  one  of  these  States  made  the  statement  dur- 
ing his  service  as  head  of  the  school  interests  of 
his  State  for  two  terms  that  seventy-five  per  cent 
of  the  schools  were  failures,  and  that  because  of 
incompetent  teachers !  In  1906-7  the  United  States 
expended  $6.43  per  capita  of  teachers  in  public 
normal  schools  for  the  training  of  teachers.^  The 
seven  States  in  question  expended  $2.(39  P^'*  capita 
of  teachers  for  the  training  of  their  teachers — about 
one  third  the  average  for  the  whole  country.  What 
can  be  expected  of  a  people  who  do  not  demand  and 
provide  skilled  teachers?  Can  a  stream  rise  higher 
than  its  source?  A  distinguished  educator  who 
spent  some  time  in  the  South  very  frankly  said 
that  he  had  never  been  in  a  place  where  such  a 
premium  is  placed  on  cheapness.  Ver}-  few  if  any 
of  these  States  have  laws  requiring  applicants  for 
license  to  teach  to  know  more  than  the  branches 
they  expect  to  teach.  To  illustrate:  One  may  teach 
a  primary  (fifth  grade)  school  by  having  completed 
the  fifth  grade  work  as  prescribed  by  the  school  law 
in  most  of  the  Southern  States,  and  passing  a  satis- 
1  Report  of  the  Commissioner  of  Education,  X907,  vol.  ii. 


What  They  Do  Not  Know  49 

factory  examination,  the  examination  in  many  in- 
stances being  little  more  than  a  farce.  To  get  to 
teach  a  public  school  in  the  mountain  district  often 
places  one  high  up  among  his  fellows  and  usually 
bestows  upon  him  forever  the  title  of  "Professor" ! 

Why,  do  you  know  that  of  the  native  white  male 
voters  in  these  seven  States  13.4  per  cent  were  illit- 
erate at  the  last  census,  while  of  the  same  class  in 
the  United  States  as  a  whole  only  4.9  per  cent  were 
illiterate?  We  are  nearly  thrice  the  average  for 
illiteracy.  But  this  is  not  all.  Mere  book  learning 
does  not  constitute  an  education.  Neither  does  it 
make  for  all  there  is  of  culture  and  refinement  and 
the  things  having  an  upward  tendency.  There  is 
a  dearth  of  general  reading  among  our  people.  A 
county  paper,  a  yellow  journal  or  cheap  novel,  and 
an  almanac  issued  by  some  irresponsible  patent 
medicine  concern  is  all  you  find  in  many  of  these 
mountain  homes.  Usually  there  is  a  Bible,  but 
the  writer  recently  procured  several  dozen  Bibles 
for  distribution  by  mountain  preachers,  and  tliey 
were  not  enough. 

What  sort  of  mental  fiber  can  be  built  on  the  aver- 
age county  newspaper?  Many  homes  are  without 
even  it,  and  are  perhaps  none  the  worse  therefor. 
There  is  a  lack  of  good  literature  even  in  the  home 
of  the  average  well-to-do  farmer.  A  stock  book, 
a  family  doctor  book,  or  an  "Everybody's  Lawyer" 
often  takes  precedence  over  every  other  sort  of 
publication  to  enter  such  homes.  The  growing 
mind  has  absolutely  nothing  to  feed  upon.  It  is 
not  an  exaggeration  to  say  that  the  farm  live  stock 
is  often  better  cared  for  than  the  farm  boy.  The 
mules  and  colts  and  calves  and  lambs  and  pigs  bring 


50  The  Highlanders  of  the  South 

money  at  an  early  age.  The  boy  doesn't.  This 
figure  is  by  no  means  overdrawn. 

May  we  say  one  or  two  things  more?  It  would 
be  a  good  thing  if  every  boy  could  be  taught  the 
evil  of  expectorating  on  the  floors  of  living  rooms, 
schoolrooms,  and  churches,  and  also  sidewalks, 
street  cars,  and  railway  coaches.  Very  few  of  these 
mountain  boys  have  an  idea  that  spitting  wherever 
one  pleases  is  unhealthy,  to  say  nothing  of  the  lack 
of  culture  and  refinement  it  implies.  The  lack  of  a 
bath  is  not  all.  It  is  hard  to  get  the  boys  and  girls 
to  see  the  need  of  cleaning  their  shoes  when  enter- 
ing a  house.  Many  of  the  men  and  women  are  the 
same  way.  Now,  please  do  not  think  I  am  think- 
ing of  a  few  and  make  these  statements  accord- 
ingly. I  am  thinking  of  hundreds  and  thousands — 
come  and  I  will  show  you. 

The  few  who  attend  church  is  another  astonish- 
ing feature.  According  to  a  recent  estimate  made 
by  the  Presbyterian  Church,  the  branch  known 
locally  as  the  Southern,  there  are  three  million  white 
children  in  the  Southern  States  out  of  Sunday 
school.    Is  this  a  field  for  mission  work? 

There  is  more  yet.  In  many  of  the  so-called 
local  centers  of  civilization  there  are  those  who 
have  peculiar  ideas  about  things.  They  think  any 
sort  of  an  old  schoolroom  is  sufficient.  We  knew 
one  woman,  who  in  her  imagination  is  a  blue- 
blooded  aristocrat,  to  say  it  was  a  useless  and  fool- 
ish expenditure  of  money  to  paper  a  schoolroom ! 
Do  you  want  to  see  her?  This  woman  has  a 
diploma  from  a  Southern  college.  Do  you  not  think 
we  have  problems  aside  from  illiteracy?  But  they 
are  to  be  treated  later. 


Hl'-'^^' 

What  They  Do  Not  Know  5  1 

We  think  schoolrooms  and  churches  ought  to  be 
better  furnished  than  the  best  dwelHng  houses  in 
the  community,  and  that  the  children  should  be 
taught  to  care  for  them.  Where  are  the  boys  and 
girls  to  get  an  impetus  to  that  which  is  higher  if 
not  at  school  and  church? 

Just  one  more  point  and  this  chapter  endeth — 
though  there  is  more  to  it.  Do  you  think  the  man 
who  feels  it  is  "stuck  up"  to  shave  oftener  than 
once  a  week  or  month,  or  change  his  linen  every 
two  weeks,  or  bathe  his  feet  at  all,  is  in  need  of 
missionary  work?  Do  you  think  the  woman  who 
cooks  like  "mam"  did,  who  "dips"  snuff  all  day  long 
and  gives  it  to  her  children,  who  goes  barefoot  most 
of  the  year,  who  perhaps  changes  dresses  once  a 
week — not  oftener — and  who  combs  her  hair  once 
a  day — maybe — a  fit  subject  for  the  missionary? 
Do  you  ?  Do  you  want  to  see  such  people  ?  Come. 
They  have  good  "mother  wit,"  too. 

Again  I  say  there  is  more  to  literacy  than  reading 
and  writing.  Such  people  as  are  mentioned  in 
this  chapter  we  have  not  by  the  hundreds  but  by 
the  thousands. 

Yes,  and  don't  you  think  a  young  mother,  good- 
looking  and  well-to-do  as  such  is  counted  in  the 
hills,  who  would  start  to  a  near-by  town  for  a  visit, 
taking  her  two  children  along,  and  all  their  neces- 
sary belongings  packed  in  two  gaily  painted  peck 
baskets,  needs  to  be  taught  that  such  things  as  suit 
cases  and  traveling  bags  have  been  invented?  If 
you  want  to  see  such,  come. 

These  statistics  tell  a  good  story — some  statistics 
relating  to  an  isolated  township  of  average  condi- 
tion, in  a  border  county,  in  the   Southern  Appa- 


52  The  Highlanders  of  the  South 

lachians.      Eighty-three    families    were    considered 
just  as  found  by  the  person  making  the  test: 

I 
Average  distance  to  county  seat,  15^  miles. 
"  "         "  post  office,  4  J  miles. 

"  "  "  public  school,  2^  miles. 

"  "  "   doctor,  4  miles. 

"  "  "  church,  2  J  miles. 

"  "         "  store,  3  J  miles. 

II 
Total  area  of  farm  land  owned  by  the  above  families, 

2,279  acres. 
Average  size  of  farm,  27  acres. 
Total  amount  cultivated,  639  acres. 
Average  amount  cultivated  to  farm,  7f  acres. 

Ill 

Crops,  gross,  $13,018. 
Crops,  net,  $12,379. 
Seven  made  no  crop. 
Average  to  farm,  $161. 

IV 
Rations:  Total   amount,   $4,438   for  year    1908;   average 

per  family,  $53.47. 
Meal:  64  raised,  19  bought. 

Flour:  Total,  $1,532;  average  per  family  for  flour,  $18.30. 
Pork:  45  raised,  38  bought. 
Coffee:   Total,    $718.80;   average   for  coffee   per   family, 

$8.66. 
Sugar:  Total,  $578;  average  for  sugar  per  family,  $6.90. 
Molasses:  40  raised,  16  bought,  27  used  none. 
Tobacco  and  snuff:  Total  expenditure,   $902;    13   raised 
all  or  in  part;  average  per  family  purchasing,  $12  .  56. 
Clothes:  Total  expenditure,  $2,949;  average  per  family, 
$35.42. 

V 
Taxes:    Total    amount,    $204.60;    average    per    family, 

$2.46. 
Men  working  road,  56. 
Type  of  Houses: 
Frame,  24 ; 
Log,  44; 
Box,  15.     Total,  83. 


What  They  Do  Not  Know  53 

Average  size  of  family,  5  J. 

Number  sleeping  in  room,  4 J. 

Number  of  beds  in  room,  i  to  4. 

Average  number  of  windows  per  house,  i^. 

Ventilation:  Minus. 

Sanitation:  Minus. 

Out  closets,  6. 

Cooking  facilities:  68  families  have  stoves;    15   cook   on 

fire  places. 
Meals:  69  families  have  meals  regularly;  14  families  have 

no  regard  for  regularity. 
Illegitimacy:   165%  of  parents  illegitimate;  8%   of  chil- 
dren illegitimate. 
Physical  conditions: 

Prevalent  diseases. 

Tuberculosi's. 

Venereal  disease. 

Hookworm  disease. 
Conditions  affecting  health: 

Lack  of  ventilation  and  sanitation. 

Monotony  of  diet. 

Insufficient  clothing. 

Consanguinity. 

These  fignres  and  estimates  are  in  no  sense  over- 
drawn, but  are  made  by  one  very  careful.  They 
can  be  duplicated  in  many  instances.  They  almost 
prove  that  the  mountain  man  is  not  so  very  health- 
ful, after  all. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

The  Problem 

^Far  be  it  from  us  to  minimize  any  racial  prob- 
lems high-bred  Southerners  claim  to  be  in  exist- 
ence, but  to  our  way  of  thinking  the  South,  chival- 
rous, patriotic,  impulsive,  and  valorous  as  she  has 
ever  been  and  is  yet,  has  but  one  problem.  Shall 
we  name  it?  If  so,  what  shall  we  call  it?  We 
want  to  make  every  one  of  our  some  ten  millions 
of  people  in  the  South  feel  good,  but  we  must  name 
that  one  problem  ignorance,  pure  and  simple.  We 
write  this  from  the  standpoint  of  one  who  was  bom 
and  raised  in  one  of  the  seceding  States  and  who 
has  no  thought  other  than  that  he  shall  spend  his 
days  here.  But  that  one  word  tells  the  truth  and 
the  whole  truth.  The  preceding  chapter  of  facts 
proves  it.  Now,  may  we  give  a  few  reasons  why 
this  is  true,  absolutely  true? 

First  of  all,  the  South  is  yet  much  more  of  an 
isolated  place  and  section  than  we  are  wont  to 
think.  We  are  progressive  in  a  sense  and  our 
leaders  are  broad  and  cosmopolitan  thinkers,  but 
among  many  of  the  well-to-do  you  find  that  Lee 
surrendered,  but  they  never  have.  Why,  I  can  show 
you  men  on  plantations  of  hundreds  of  acres  who 
yet  believe  in  the  divine  right  of  human  slavery,  and 
A^ho  expect  if  all  the  powers  of  the  Federal  govern- 
ment get  into  the  hands  of  a  certain  political  party 
that  they  will  get  pay  for  slaves  freed  by  the  civil 
war!  Is  that  ignorance?  This  same  man  thinks 
54 


The  Problem  55 

he  ought  to  have  his  slaves  back.  He  has  been  to 
college,  too,  and  has  been  born  since  Appomattox. 
These  men  dwell  in  the  mountains  of  the  South  and 
are  just  as  pronounced  as  those  who  dwell  farther 
South  where  "cotton  is  king  and  sugar  cane  is 
queen."  These  are  the  people  who  make  the  prob- 
lem difficult  of  solution.  They  are  "hidebound," 
if  I  may  use  the  word.  They  travel  but  little,  and 
then  only  in  places  where  they  know  they  will  find 
things  suited  to  their  tastes.  Everything  must  be 
Southern  as  taught  to  them  for  generations.  The 
poor  white  man  or  the  man  who  has  no  blue-blooded 
ancestry  of  which  to  boast  can  have  no  place  with 
them.  They  often  live  in  lordly  isolation  with  this 
same  poor  white  man  to  serve  and  wait  and  slave 
and  labor.  As  our  free  public  schools  advance  it 
is  no  uncommon  thing  to  see  the  children  of  the 
one  and  the  other  side  by  side  in  school  keeping 
pace  and  graduating  together.  But  always  there  is 
the  gap  or  abyss  between. 

We  write  as  an  impartial  observer,  though  our 
fathers  were  slave  owners. 

It  may  seem  strange,  but  certainly  in  no  part  of 
the  world  are  there  people  of  a  common  ancestry 
who  are  at  such  extremes  of  poverty  and  wealth,  of 
ignorance  and  learning,  of  uncouthness  and  cul- 
ture, as  you  find  in  the  Southern  States.  The 
tragedy  of  the  whole  thing  is  that  the  man  of 
wealth,  learning,  and  culture  has  so  little  sympathy 
with  his  brother  of  poverty,  ignorance,  and  un- 
couthness. His  is  an  education  of  aristocracy  and 
not  of  democracy.  It  is  perhaps  not  too  much  to 
say  that  in  many  instances  he  would  sooner  help 
the    negro   than   a   poor   white   man.      Many   are 


56  The  Highlanders  of  the  South 

familiar  with  the  saying  in  certain  sections,  "I'd 
rather  be  a  negro  than  a  poor  white  man," 

This  same  well-to-do  white  man  in  the  South 
often  gets  to  be  an  editor,  a  member  of  the  legis- 
lature, a  congressman,  or  a  United  States  senator. 
He  frequently  continues  to  view  the  world  through 
the  same  inconsistent  smoked  glasses,  as  the  fol- 
lowing incident  will  show.  The  Speaker  referred 
to  was  Hon.  Thomas  B.  Reed,  and  the  incident  took 
place  in  Washington  in  the  first  months  of  1898, 
immediately  preceding  the  Spanish-American  war: 

"I  remember  a  scene  in  the  Speaker's  office  just 
before  the  outbreak  of  war,  which  illustrates  not 
only  his  attitude  in  this  matter,  but  the  quickness 
of  his  wit.  I  had  gone  to  his  office  at  his  request 
in  relation  to  certain  matters  connected  with  the 
business  of  the  Coast  Survey.  As  we  sat  talking 
a  Southern  member  of  Congress  burst  into  the 
room,  his  face  aflame  with  excitement,  a  newspaper 
in  his  hand.  Planting  the  paper  on  the  table  before 
the  Speaker,  he  demanded  in  an  excited  voice 
whether  a  civilized  nation  would  permit  such 
things  as  were  there  described  within  ninety  miles 
of  its  borders.  Slowly  adjusting  his  glasses,  the 
Speaker  cast  his  eye  over  the  paper.  At  the  top,  in 
large  headlines,  was  a  story  of  the  suflferings  of  the 
reconcentrados.  But  about  halfway  down  the  page, 
in  smaller  lines,  was  an  account  of  an  assault  on  a 
negro  postmaster  in  one  of  the  Southern  States. 
Instead  of  reading  the  top  lines,  the  Speaker  read  in 
his  drawling  voice  the  lower  set  of  headlines:  'The 
Postmaster  at  Blank  Shot — His  Wife  Ill-treated — ■ 
His  House  Burned.'  'Why,  my  friend,'  said  he, 
in  the   same  drawling  tone,   'that   can't   be   down 


The  Problem  57 

South;  that  must  be  over  in  Cuba.  If  we  had  a 
civilization  like  that  we  wouldn't  want  to  spread  it 
over  Cuba  anyhow,  would  we?'  By  that  time  the 
would-be  saviour  of  Cuba  was  well  on  his  way  out 
of  the  room."^ 

The  one  redeeming  feature  about  this  middle 
class  and  "poor  whites,"  for  whose  help  this  little 
book  is  sent  out,  is  that  they  may  be  made  over  in 
one  generation.  Our  schools  and  colleges  are  full 
of  touching  incidents.  The  problem  is  not  what 
they  can  do,  but  how  to  get  them  to  do  it.  These 
classes  have  furnished  men  in  every  walk  of  life 
from  alderman  to  president ;  from  circuit  preacher 
to  the  episcopacy ;  from  local  magistrate  to  supreme 
court  judge ;  and  from  a  country  doctor  to  an 
eminent  physician  and  surgeon.  Nor  should  we 
leave  out  the  country  school-teacher  who  later  be- 
came college  professor  and  university  president. 

Since  Dr.  Wilson  tells  us  to  quote  as  we  like 
from  The  Southern  Mountaineers,  we  take  the  fol- 
lowing as  illustrative  of  the  classes  involved  in  the 
problem : 

"A  century  and  a  half  have  passed  away,  and  the 
men  of  the  mountains  of  to-day  are  the  descendants 
of  some  of  those  sterling  pioneers.  They  have  held 
lonely  state  for  several  generations  in  their  Appa- 
lachian homes ;  but  they  are  still  there  to  give  ac- 
count of  themselves,  and  to  face  the  providential 
future.  There  have  developed  among  these  dwellers 
in  the  mountains  three  distinct  classes  that  must  be 
recognized  by  every  judicious  student  of  their 
historv. 


>  Henry  S.   Pritchett   in   the  North  American  Review    for    March, 
1909,  "Some  Recollections  of  McKinley." 


58  The  Highlanders  of  the  South 

"(i)  There  are  the  large  numbers  of  them  that 
have  occupied  the  fertile  and  extensive  valleys  of 
the  Shenandoah  and  East  Tennessee,  and  other 
rich  valleys  and  plateaus,  and  have  established 
centers  of  trade  and  commerce  that  have  developed 
such  prosperous  cities  and  towns  as  Chattanooga, 
Knoxville,  Johnson  City,  Bristol,  Asheville,  Salem, 
Roanoke,  Lexington,  Staunton,  and  Harrisonburg. 
These  mountaineers,  or  rather  valley-dwellers,  have 
to  deal  only  with  such  questions  as  afifect  other 
intelligent  sections  of  our  land.  They  send  out 
missionaries  to  the  ends  of  the  earth,  and  have  as 
rich  and  pure  a  life  as  have  any  urban  or  country 
people  of  our  Southland.  They  outnumber  the 
other  two  classes  combined.  To  apply  to  them  any 
hasty  generalizations  suggested  by  a  study  of  the 
third  class  is  simply  unpardonable. 

"(2)  Away  from  these  centers  of  wealth  or 
competence,  and  culture,  and  refinement,  there  are 
two  other  classes  more  affected  by  their  mountain 
environment  than  are  these  others  that  merely  live 
in  sight  of  the  mountains  or  in  the  highland  com- 
munities that  are  'lowland'  in  their  development. 
There  are,  first,  the  true,  worthy  mountaineers  that 
deserve  far  more  of  praise  than  of  dispraise.  While 
their  isolated  and  hard  life,  remote  from  the  centers 
of  culture,  has  contracted  their  wants  and  the  supply 
of  those  wants,  and  has  forced  them  to  do  without 
a  multitude  of  the  'necessities'  and  conveniences  and 
luxuries  that  seem  indispensable  to  many  other 
people  of  the  twentieth  century,  they  have  kept  that 
which  is  really  worth  while,  namely,  their  virility 
and  force  of  character. 

"The  fact  is  that  Nature,  in  accordance  with  her 


The  Problem  59 

marvelous  method  of  compensations,  has  endowed 
these  hardy  mountaineers  with  some  sterner  qual- 
ities in  lieu  of  the  more  Chesterfieldian  ones  of 
more  favored  society ;  qualities  that  render  them  in 
some  respects  stronger  and  more  resourceful  than 
their  more  pampered  kinsmen  of  the  valley  or  the 
plain.  They  have  escaped  many  of  the  vices  and 
follies  that  are  sapping  the  life  of  modern  society. 
They  have  nerves,  in  this  day  of  neurasthenia  and 
neuremia.  They  know  something  of  all  the  neces- 
sary arts,  in  these  days  when  centralized  labor  gives 
each  workman  only  a  part  of  one  art  to  which  to 
apply  himself. 

/  "The  mountaineer  of  this  class  eats  what  he 
raises,  and  applies  to  the  store  for  only  coffee  and 
sugar  to  supplement  what  his  acres  produce.  He 
does  his  own  horseshoeing,  carpentering,  shoemak- 
ing,  and  sometimes  he  weaves  homespun.  He  is 
the  most  hospitable  host  on  earth  and  heartily  en- 
joys his  guest,  providing  that  guest  has  the  courtesy 
to  show  his  appreciation  of  what  is  offered  him. 
His  honesty  coexists  with  native  shrewdness  that 
is  sometimes  a  revelation  to  the  unscrupulous 
visitor  that  would  take  advantage  of  him  in  a  trade. 
He  is  usually  amply  able  to  take  care  of  himself. 
Indeed,  no  American  has  a  livelier  native  intelli- 
gence. 

"To  speak  of  this  class  of  mountaineers  as  merit- 
ing patronizing  disdain  is  to  show  oneself  to  be  a 
most  superficial  observer.  Many  of  these  men  of 
the  mountains  do,  perhaps,  need  much  that  can  be 
given  from  without  the  Appalachian,  but  they  have 
a  reserve  strength  that,  when  aroused,  will  speedily 
prove  them  the  peers  of  any  people. 


6o  The  Highlanders  of  the  South 

"(3)  There  is  a  third  and  much  smaller  class  of 
mountaineers  of  which  not  so  much  good  can  be 
said.  They  correspond  to,  while  entirely  different 
from,  that  peculiar  and  pitiable  lowland  class  of 
humanity  that  was  one  of  the  indirect  products  of 
the  institution  of  slavery — 'the  poor  whites/  or 
'mudsills,'  as  they  used  to  be  called.  They  are  the 
comparatively  few,  who  are  very  incorrectly  sup- 
posed by  many  readers  of  magazine  articles  to  be 
typical  of  the  entire  body  of  Southern  mountaineers. 
/  By  this  mistaken  supposition  a  mighty  injustice  is 
i  done  to  a  very  large  majority  of  the  dwellers  in  the 
■  Appalachians.  As  fairly  judge  England  by  'Dark- 
est England' ;  or  London  by  Whitechapel ;  or  New 
York  by  the  slums;  or  any  community  by  the  sub- 
merged tenth. 

"This  third  class  consists  of  the  drift,  the  flotsam 
and  jetsam  that  are  cast  up  here  and  there  among 
the  mountains.  They  are  the  shiftless,  ambitionless 
degenerates,  such  as  are  found  wherever  men  are 
found.  Usually  they  own  little  or  no  land  and  eke 
out  a  precarious  existence,  as  only  a  beneficent 
Providence  that  cares  for  the  birds  and  other  deni- 
zens of  the  forest  could  explain. 

"The  proportion  of  Scotch-Irish  names  may 
not  be  so  great  among  these  people,  but  many 
such  names  are  found  among  them.  This  class 
would  be  a  very  hopeless  one  were  it  not  for  a 
quality  that  will  be  referred  to  again — namely,  the 
fact  that  it  can  be  made  over  in  one  generation. 

"It  need  hardly  be  said  that,  as  in  all  classifica- 
tions of  men  on  the  basis  of  character  and  condi- 
tion, there  are  many  gradations  among  these  three 
classes;    and,   indeed,   that  the   classes   themselves 


The  Problem  6 1 

merge  into  one  another  so  that  at  times  it  is  impos- 
sible to  say  just  where  one  ends  and  another  begins. 
But  why  be  too  nice  in  determining  metes  and 
bounds?  Is  there  not  even  in  the  great  metropoHs 
a  slum  problem,  and  is  there  not  a  Fifth  Avenue 
problem — both  with  indeterminate  boundaries? 
The  worthiest  question  anyone  can  ask  him- 
self is :  How  can  I  best  help  any  brother  man  of 
mine,  of  any  rank  and  race,  submerged  or  non-Ji 
submerged,  to  realize  his  high  calling  in  Christ 
Jesus ?"i 

While  we  may  not  exactly  agree  with  what  Class 
One  is  doing  according  to  President  Wilson,  we 
do  know  that  Class  Two  and  Class  Three  are  the 
people  we  want  to  reach.  We  feel  safe  in  saying 
also  that  it  may  not  be  easily  done  through  Class 
One,  though  that  is  the  way  it  should  be  done. 
Class  One  have  sufficient  advantages,  comparatively 
speaking.    They  need  waking  up. 

Class  Two  is  perhaps  the  strongest  of  the  classes 
and  is  possessed  of  the  greatest  possibilities.  But 
there  will  be  more  development  in  Class  Three  than 
in  any,  once  you  get  him  aroused.  He  is  the  man  ■ 
who  is  made  over  in  one  generation.  It  is  he  who 
calls  for  the  best  there  is  in  us. 

With  the  first  class  able  to  take  care  of  itself 
and  the  second  class  willing  to  help, it  is  up  to  us  to 
see  to  it  that  this  third  class,  who  doesn't  care  a 
straw  which  way  the  wind  blows,  is  made  to  care. 
How  shall  we  reach  him?  But  do  not  forget  that 
in  the  humble  opinion  of  the  writer  each  of  these 
classes  is  a  fit  subject  for  more  or  less  missionary 
work — the  first  because  he   could   do  more  if  he 

>  President  S.  T.  Wilson,  The  Southern  Mountaineers,  pp.  15-20. 


62  The  Highlander*  of  the  South 

were  not  "hidebound" ;  the  second  because  he  is 
willing  but  docs  not  know  how ;  and  the  third  be- 
cause he  is  almost  helpless. 

One  of  the  first  class  said  to  a  gentleman  but 
recently  in  discussing  the  work  of  the  Board  of 
Education  of  our  Church,  and  also  the  gifts  of 
Northern  men  to  Southern  educational  and  church 
work,  "Darn  'em,  they  took  our  property;  let  'em 
give  us  money."  The  words  were  prompted  by 
the  remark  that  Southerners  have  no  right  to  expect 
Northern  men  to  educate  their  children.  This  man 
was  born  since  the  civil  war,  but  he  thinks  he  should 
have  pay  for  the  slaves  he  failed  to  inherit.  Does 
he  need  missionary  work?  Don't  you  dare  tell  him 
that,  for  he  is  sure  he  is  "up-to-now."  But  I  am 
not  writing  this  for  him. 

It  is  this  prejudice  of  the  well-to-do  Southerner 
against  the  lower  class  and  less  fortunate  white 
man  and  negro  that  really  gives  us  any  problem  at 
all.  The  mountain  man  is  arbitrary  in  his  feelings 
as  well  as  in  other  things,  but  his  more  fortunate 
neighbor  could  help  him  if  he  would.  But  he  will 
not  for  at  least  another  generation.  One  of  these 
"unterrified"  recently  remarked  that  the  Masons 
turned  Mr.  Taft  down,  since  they  made  him  a 
Mason  "at  sight" !  He  believed  it  because  a  neigh- 
bor had  so  informed  him. 

I  admit  that  some  things  in  this  chapter  may 
seem  a  little  "farfetched,"  but  there  is  not  a  single 
one  of  them  that  cannot  be  substantiated  and  even 
duplicated  almost  any  day.  It  is  our  business  to 
tell  the  truth.  Do  you  think  we  have  a  problem  in 
these  mountains?  Do  you  think  the  words  "race 
problem"    express    the    situation    clearly    for    the 


The  Problem  63 

South?  Again  we  say  the  South  has  but  one 
problem — ignorance !    Just  come  and  see. 

But  before  we  close  this  chapter  let  us  mention 
one  other  thing  tending  to  make  the  problem  the 
more  difificult.  Things  in  local  communities  are  so 
depressing.  In  church  affairs  in  the  country  dis- 
tricts and  even  in  the  towns  the  preacher  must  be 
the  leading  factor.  He  must  have  the  life  and  en- 
ergy and  push,  or  things  stand  still.  The  same  is 
true  of  the  educator.  Rarely  does  he  find  a  man 
who  will  take  the  initiative.  Every  fellow  seems  to 
be  following  the  line  of  least  resistance — the  same 
old  story  of  not  caring  which  way  the  wind  blows 
or  if  it  blows  at  all.  But  this  is  just  another  phase 
of  the  problem,  though  a  very  true  one  and  no  less 
difficult  than  the  others.  It  is  particularly  true  of 
the  man  who  shepherds  a  flock  or  leads  a  neighbor- 
hood in  things  educational.  He  has  to  make  his 
own  atmosphere  of  energy  and  endeavor  if  he 
breathes  any. 

Of  course,  the  one  and  only  method  of  redemp- 
tion is  religion  and  education.  It  is  difficult  to  say 
which  should  come  first.  It  seems  that  it  takes  the 
education  to  make  the  religion  "stick."  The  work 
of  the  school  should  be  spiritual,  of  course,  but 
among  us  no  greater  work  can  be  done  than  train- 
ing the  mind  to  stay  at  a  thing  as  well  as  to  get 
at  it. 

It  might  be  well  enough  to  say  that  another 
phase  of  the  problem  is  the  large  families  found  in 
these  mountain  homes.  Not  infrequently  six  or 
eight  or  ten  or  even  twelve  persons  cook,  eat,  and 
sleep  in  one  room,  and  it  often  not  twenty  feet 
square!     But  there  is  plenty  of  ventilation.     They 


64  The  Highlanders  of  the  South 

bring-  children  into  the  world,  but  what  about 
preparinj:^  them  for  the  responsibilities  of  life? 
One  native  says  that  up  in  the  Cumberland  Moun- 
tains women  raise  large  families  of  children  with- 
out the  incumbency  of  a  husband!  If  you  doubt  it 
take  a  little  trip  up  there  or  elsewhere  in  the 
Southern  Appalachians. 

If  we  were  writing  this  for  Secretary  Mason  we 
would  include  the  mixed-blooded  people  as  a  part 
of  the  problem  and  blame  them  to  the  well-to-do 
Southerner. 


CHAPTER  IX 
Other  Denominations 

Apropos  of  this  little  book  for  our  own  people 
specially  but  for  all  generally,  it  is  but  meet  that 
a  word  be  said  about  other  denominations  and  what 
they  are  doing  for  the  strengthening  of  the  reli- 
gious and  educational  fiber  in  a  region  not  poor  nor 
poverty-stricken  save  in  imagination.  And  do  you 
know  any  poverty  direr  or  more  pitiable  than  the 
imaginary?  I  do  not  mean  that  we  are  rich,  but 
that  we  could  do  so  much  more  than  we  do  if  we 
could  only  see  it  that  way — could  but  get  the  vision. 

A  boy  was  digging  potatoes  on  a  red  hillside  when 
a  passing  stranger  hailed  him  as  to  what  he  was 
doing  and  what  the  yield  per  acre  would  be. 

"Six  or  eight  bushels,"  replied  the  boy. 

"My,  my,  but  you  must  have  a  difficult  time  mak- 
ing a  living  in  such  a  country  as  this,"  commented 
the  stranger. 

Other  remarks  of  a  similar  nature,  all  breathing 
sympathy,  followed  until  the  boy  had  as  much  as 
he  could  endure,  and  suddenly  cried  out: 

"I  ain't  as  pore  as  yer  think  I  am,  stranger.  I 
don't  own  this  land;  I'm  jist  a  wurkin  it!" 

Take  the  reverse  of  this  story,  investigate  and 
you  will  see  that  none  of  us  in  the  South  are  as 
poor  as  we  think  we  are.  We  may  be  a  bit  slow, 
but  there  is  within  us  much  latent  power  making  us 
rich  beyond  our  fondest  dreams  once  we  realize 
where  our  strength  lies. 

65 


66  The  Highlanders  of  the  South 

One  would  perhaps  expect  the  Methodist  Epis- 
copal Church,  South,  to  have  the  greatest  aggre- 
gate of  wealth.  And  such  is  true.  Since  all 
Churches  place  more  stress  upon  the  ministry  and 
preaching  the  Word  than  upon  any  other  phase  of 
religion,  we  think  it  best  to  emphasize  the  educa- 
tional phase  here.  Hence  our  figures  relate  only 
to  schools  and  their  work.  Only  white  schools  are 
considered,  the  colored  schools  being  left  to  Secre- 
tary Mason  and  like  worthy  men  in  other  Churches. 

We  have  tried  to  be  very  careful  in  compiling 
our  figures,  but  may  have  made  some  errors.  Our 
estimates  are  made  for  the  States  of  Georgia,  Ken- 
tucky, North  Carolina,  South  Carolina,  Tennessee, 
Virginia,  and  West  Virginia,  and  are  taken  from 
the  Southern  Methodist  Handbook  for  1909.  Ac- 
cording to  this  authority,  this  great  Church  has 
within  the  limits  of  these  States  one  university, 
thirty  colleges,  and  thirty-five  academies  and  un- 
classified schools,  with  a  total  wealth  of  $5,866,- 
327;  an  endowment  fund  for  those  schools  of 
$2,748,602,  and  an  enrollment  of  13.170  students. 
True,  this  Church  had  its  origin  in  the  South  in 
times  when  blood  was  thicker  than  water,  and  when 
men  made  church  lines  no  less  tense  than  those  of 
party,  war,  or  principle.  This  is  pretty  fair  prop- 
erty as  an  educational  plant  Much  business  can  be 
done  therewith. 

We  have  the  following  for  the  Baptist  Church  in 
these  seven  States  taken  from  the  American  Baptist 
Year  Book  for  1909:  Five  universities,  sixteen 
colleges,  and  thirty-five  academies  and  smaller 
schools.  These  show  a  total  wealth  of  $2,868,485. 
with  $1,460,745  endowment  and  an  enrollment  of 


Other  Denominations  67 

5,371  students.  The  Baptist  Church  has  been  in 
these  States  a  long  while  and  has  had  no  internecine 
war  to  cut  its  power  in  twain  as  had  some  of  the 
other  Churches.  This  is  not  a  bad  showing  for  the 
Baptists. 

According  to  President  Wilson  in  The  Southern 
Mountaineers,  we  gather  some  interesting  facts 
about  the  Presbyterian  Church,  The  figures  are 
for  the  year  1905.  Amount  of  endowment  is  not 
available,  but  it  is  good.  Since  this  estimate  was 
made  there  has  been  great  increase  in  finances, 
especially  at  Maryville,  Tennessee,  and  also  in 
attendance  within  this  splendid  working  Church. 

But  let  us  see  for  1905.  The  Presbyterians  then 
had  one  university,  five  colleges,  and  fifty- four 
academies  and  smaller  schools,  with  a  property 
valuation  of  $1,934,620  and  an  enrollment  of  8,478 
students.  Bear  in  mind  that  this  Church  pays  the 
largest  amount  per  capita  of  membership  for  all 
purposes  of  any  Church  in  this  country.  Note  also 
that  her  property  valuation  is  barely  one-third  that 
of  the  Southern  Methodists,  but  that  she  has  almost 
two  thirds  their  enrollment.  And  do  not  forget  that 
this  Church  has  fifty-four  academies  and  smaller 
schools,  or  exactly  one  half  more  than  any  other 
Church  operating  in  the  South,  To  the  writer's  way 
of  seeing  things,  this  Church  is  doing  preeminently 
the  constructive  and  creative  work  in  the  South 
to-day,  and  it  is  by  means  of  its  smaller  schools, 
whereby  education  is  carried  right  up  to  the  door 
of  the  fellow  who  will  get  it  in  no  other  way.  It 
may  be  that  we  place  too  high  an  estimate  on  the 
work  of  the  smaller  schools  as  feeders  to  the  col- 
leges and  larger  schools,  but  look  at  results  obtained 


68  The  Highlanders  of  the  South 

and  certainly  there  is  an  admissible  reason  for  the 
judgment. 

These  are  the  leading  Churches  in  the  South  out- 
side our  own,  which  is  to  be  treated  in  a  separate 
chapter. 

So  far  as  we  are  able  to  learn,  the  United  Breth- 
ren Church  has  but  one  school  in  the  South,  and 
that  a  very  small  one,  the  property  being  worth 
about  $18,000,  the  enrollment  about  125,  and  the 
grade  hardly  more  than  academic. 

The  Christian  Church  has  a  few  small  schools, 
as  do  the  Friends  and  a  few  of  the  smaller  denomi- 
nations. As  has  been  said,  the  Catholics  are  estab- 
lishing mission  schools  here  and  there  where  they 
expect  to  get  a  strong  hold. 

Will  you  study  this  chapter  ? 


CHAPTER  X 
The  Methodist  Episcopal  Church 

Since  the  reorganization  of  our  Church  in  the 
South  nearly  half  a  century  ago  we  have  had  some- 
what of  a  strenuous  life  accompanied  by  a 
rather  marvelous  growth.  Our  ministers  have  been 
almost  constantly  on  the  firing-lines,  so  to  speak. 
In  many  instances  church  lines  have  been  tense,  and 
even  we  have  been  told  that  we  have  no  business  in 
the  South.  Other  things  have  tended  to  discour- 
age the  forwardness  of  our  movements.  Despite 
these  and  many  other  things,  we  have  gone  steadily 
forward  until  we  are  recognized  now  as  one  of  the 
three  or  four  leading  denominations  in  the  Southern 
States.  Many  things  have  converged  to  make  us 
this.  As  one  man  put  it  in  talking  to  Bishop  Quayle 
recently,  many  like  to  belong  to  a  whole  and  not  to 
a  detached  part.  They  like  our  Church  because  it 
represents  the  original  organization  of  Methodists. 
Many  others  also  see  great  promise  for  the  future 
in  our  Church,  believing  that  as  we  make  advances 
we  will  bring  influential  help  tending  to  make  not 
only  for  religious  enterprise  but  for  educational 
advancement  and  gain  as  well.  They  look  upon  it 
as  a  cosmopolitan  Church  from  which  reasonably 
great  and  broad  results  for  the  general  good  may 
b^  expected. 

Led  by  godly  men,  our  people  have  been  always 
spiritualizing  and  inspiring  to  others.  Nor  have 
they  feared  to  sacrifice  personal  conveniences  and 

69 


70  The  Highlanders  of  the  South 

desires  for  the  common  good.  Possessed  of  "a. 
strange  warming  of  the  heart,"  they  have  pushed 
forward  into  unthought-of  places,  carrying  with 
them  the  sign  and  the  spirit  by  which  they  always 
conquer.  Too  much  cannot  be  said  in  praise  of  the 
people  called  Methodists.  Nor  is  it  reasonable  to 
suppose  that  too  much  may  be  hoped  for  from  them 
in  the  future,  considered  in  a  reasonable  way. 

We  have  some  excellent  property  and  some  very 
fine  church  homes,  but  in  this  as  well  as  in  other 
things  there  are  extremes  of  poverty  and  wealth, 
as  illustrations  would  show. 

When  it  comes  to  schools  our  Church  compares 
favorably  with  others  respecting  work  done,  but 
not  with  respect  to  wealth.  According  to  our  Year 
Book  for  1909,  we  have  one  university  in  these 
Southern  States  (these  figures  are  concerning 
schools  for  the  whites),  one  college,  and  eleven 
academies  and  smaller  schools.  These  have  an 
aggregate  wealth  of  $761,000,  with  an  endowment 
fund  of  $321,500  and  an  enrollment  of  2,940. 
Counting  property  valuation  and  equipment,  you 
will  see  that  our  number  of  students  compares 
very  favorably  with  any  of  the  other  schools. 

With  a  rapidly  developing  and  vastly  resourceful 
country,  it  is  fair  to  say  that  there  is  little  danger 
of  being  too  optimistic  about  the  future  of  our 
Church  in  the  South.  It  is  rapidly  taking  hold  of 
the  people  and  making  for  itself  a  recognition 
among  Churches  and  schools  that  is  second  to  none. 

Let  not  this  be  taken  in  adverse  criticism,  but  it 
appears  to  the  writer  that  if  we  could  put  more 
money  into  schools  and  churches  farther  up  in  the 
mountains,   remote   from   centers  of  learning  and 


The  Methodist  Episcopal  Church  7  1 

religious  culture,  results  would  be  greater  and 
more  far-reaching.  But  that  is  a  matter  wholly 
for  our  farseeing  leaders  to  settle.  Certain  it  is 
that  some  of  our  best  men  have  been  started  and 
given  the  inspiration  to  go  ahead  in  some  one  of 
our  little  mountain  schools.  Our  central  university 
at  Chattanooga  readily  testifies  to  the  truthfulness 
of  this  statement,  and  it  can  do  so  among  its  best 
students  to-day.  Lest  it  may  be  said  we  are  unduly 
prejudiced  in  favor  of  Alethodist  folk,  we  will  close 
this  chapter  without  more  words  of  praise  and 
prophecy  for  the  magnificent  Church  which  has 
never  forgotten  the  words  of  its  great  founder,  who 
wrought  far  better  than  he  knew :  "I  look  upon  all 
the  world  as  my  parish." 

However,  just  to  show  our  religious  resources, 
these  figures,  perhaps,  are  not  out  of  place.  Taking 
the  following  Conferences,  Saint  Johns  River, 
Saint  Louis,  Alabama,  Austin,  Blue  Ridge,  Central 
Tennessee,  Georgia,  Gulf,  Holston,  Kentucky,  Mis- 
souri, and  West  Virginia,  we  have,  according  to  our 
Year  Book,  1,133  preachers,  223,206  members, 
221,541  Sunday  school  scholars,  2,943  churches 
worth  $6,200,560,  and  728  parsonages  worth 
$1,425,118.  /  This  is  a  good  plant  with  which  to  do 
business  for  the  Lord,  but  we  as  Methodists  can 
and  will  make  it  much  more  effective  in  the  near 
years  to  come. 


CHAPTER  XI 
The  Progress  of  the  South 

With  the  many  things  set  down  as  being  against 
the  South,  there  remains  the  indisputable  fact  that 
we  are  making  rapid  advancement,  and  that  this 
progress  is  not  confined  to  any  particular  locality, 
but  seems  to  be  widespread.  Factories  and  mills 
have  sprung  up  as  if  by  magic.  Where  a  short 
time  ago  you  found  a  little  "corn  cracker,"  mashing 
a  bushel  or  so  of  corn  a  day,  you  now  see  fine  roller 
mills,  turning  out  daily  several  barrels  of  flour  nicely 
packed  in  bags  supplying  local  trade  and  doing 
some  merchant  milling. 

In  many  instances  where  stood  the  blacksmith 
shop  or  saw  mill  one  sees  an  iron  forge  or  a  wood- 
working establishment,  each  giving  employment  to 
many  men.  And  no  better  laborer  is  found  than 
the  Southern  mountaineer.  He  has  good  nerve, 
plenty  of  grit,  and  his  intelligence  is  such  that  he 
soon  becomes  a  skilled  laborer.  Farther  South  the 
cotton  mills  have  given  great  opportunities  for  the 
development  of  men  of  ability  in  the  management 
of  large  affairs  in  milling  interests.  The  people 
have  not  been  slow  to  take  advantage  of  all  such 
opportunities. 

Manufacturing  interests  and  milling  plants  of 
all  kinds  have  proven  almost  veritable  gold  mines 
to  the  South,  but  that  which  would  appear  of 
greater  and  more  permanent  value  is  the  awakened 
and  increasing  vigorousness  with  which   scientific 

72 


The  Progress  of  the  South  73 

farming  is  pursued.  We  are  many  years  behind 
yet  on  this,  but  recent  advances  seem  prophetic  of 
much  greater  things.  As  it  has  been  for  all  historic 
time,  so  it  is  now  and  will  ever  be,  that  the  per- 
manency of  any  people  depends  upon  the  intelli- 
gence, skill,  and  success  with  which  they  till  the 
soil,  care  for  its  fertility,  and  minimize  its  waste. 
And  the  strongest  thing  about  farming  here  is  that 
the  dignity  of  labor  is  becoming  more  and  more  to 
be  recognized  as  worth  while,  and  that  he  who 
labors  honestly  for  the  welfare  of  his  own  house- 
hold as  well  as  that  of  others  is  respected,  honored, 
and  commended. 

Quoting  from  World's  Work,  June,  1907,  from 
which  all  the  quotations  in  this  chapter  are  taken, 
we  have : 

"Fifty  years  ago,  moreover,  the  farmers  of  the 
Upland  South  wasted  the  lands — tilled  a  field  reck- 
lessly for  a  few  years,  then  cleared  a  'new  ground' 
and  abandoned  the  old  to  broomsage  and  gullies ; 
but  now  this  land-debauchery  has  ended.  Crop 
rotation  and  the  legumes  preserve  the  earth's  fer- 
tility. Every  year  a  crop  of  land-enriching  cow- 
peas  may  be  sandwiched  in  between  the  staple  crops 
or  cultivated  in  connection  with  them.  Farmers  no 
longer  scratch  over  five  hundred  acres  to  make 
what  intensive  culture  would  produce  on  one 
hundred.  'Don't  go  West  to  find  a  new  plantation,' 
says  a  new  eastern-Carolina  proverb ;  'plow  deeper 
and  you  will  find  a  new  one  just  below  the  old  one 
you  have  been  scratching  on.' 

"Two  stories  from  real  life  will  illustrate  as 
well  as  anything  else  the  whole  story  of  the 
State's  [North  Carolina]  farming  progress. 


74  The  Highlanders  of  the  South 

"  'You  see  I  could  not  afford  to  be  governor !' 
The  man  who  said  this  is  not  a  congressman  nor  a 
capitalist  nor  a  manufacturer,  but  a  humble,  slave- 
born  negro  farmer — Calvin  Brock,  of  Wayne 
County.  He  v^as  talking  to  the  governor  of  North 
Carolina,  vi^hose  salary  is  only  $4,000  annually  and 
whose  clear  profit  is  minus — while  Calvin  Brock 
had  made  the  year  before  a  clear  profit  of  $2,723.61 
on  fifteen  acres  of  strawberries  alone,  besides  culti- 
vating fifty  acres  of  land  in  other  crops.  The  black 
Cincinnatus  certainly  could  not  afford  to  leave  his 
plow  for  the  salary  of  the  chief  executive — although 
he  has  never  seen  the  inside  of  a  schoolhouse  and 
only  learned  to  read  and  write  by  copying  and 
conning  a  scrawled  alphabet  which  a  country  car- 
penter penciled  for  him  on  a  new  pine  shingle ! 

"Another  experience  is  that  of  a  white  farmer  in 
an  adjoining  county  who  paid  five  hundred  dollars 
for  a  farm  of  fifty-three  acres  in  1899 — not  quite 
$10  an  acre.  Its  former  owner  had  acted  on  the 
theory  that  he  didn't  own  anything  except  three 
inches  of  surface  soil,  and  with  such  cultivation  it 
took  four  acres  of  the  land  to  make  a  bale  of  cotton. 
But  that  policy  by  no  means  commended  itself  to 
the  new  owner.  Thoroughly  inoculated  with  the 
idea  of  crop  rotation  and  deep  plowing,  he  aston- 
ished the  soil  itself  by  the  energy  of  his  reforms. 
Hitching  an  eleven-hundred  pound  mule  to  an  ordi- 
nary plow,  he  found  that  it  would  not  penetrate  the 
brickyard  that  lay  beneath  the  few  inches  of  culti- 
vated upper  crust.  Then  he  hitched  up  two  horses 
and  they  broke  off  his  plow,  whereupon  he  swore 
and  sent  to  Chattanooga  for  a  four-horse  disk  plow. 
Bv  this  time  the  'moss-backed'  farmers  who  had 


The  Progress  of  the  South  75 

never  averaged  more  than  a  quarter-bale  per  acre 
had  sworn  that  he  would  ruin  his  land  forever  with 
his  newfangled  'book- farming'  ideas ;  but  to  no 
effect.  'I  surely  can't  make  money  by  your  plans,' 
he  retorted,  'and  it  can't  be  any  worse  to  try  the 
book-farming  ideas,  as  you  call  them.  And  as  for 
ruining  the  land,  it's  my  own,  I  reckon,  and  I  will 
plow  clean  down  half  way  to  China  if  I  want  to.' 
Of  course,  the  man  ought  to  have  deepened  his 
seed-bed  gradually,  instead  of  bringing  so  much 
subsoil  to  the  surface  at  once,  but  liberal  disk  har- 
rowing largely  overcame  his  errors  here,  and  the 
heavy  cowpea  crop  and  the  barnyard  manure  did 
the  rest.  The  next  year  indicated  the  land's  upward 
trend;  and  by  proper  rotation  and  cultivation  he 
brought  it  up  until,  in  1905,  part  of  it  made  two 
bales  of  cotton  per  acre ;  and  this  year,  following 
corn  last  year,  he  hopes  for  a  two-bale  average  on 
the  entire  field.  To-day  he  wouldn't  sell  his  $9.43 
land  of  1899  for  $100  an  acre;  and  why  should  he, 
since  even  at  that  figure  the  buyer  could  pay  for  it 
with  the  first  year's  cotton  crop?  His  example  is 
but  one  of  thousands  that  might  be  cited,  and  that 
have  proved  as  contagious  as  measles." 

Then,  the  people  are  changing  their  attitude  on 
many  questions.  Half  a  century  ago  the  planta- 
tion owners  planned  one  of  the  professions  for  their 
boys,  usually  the  law.  Not  so  now.  Quoting  again, 
we  read :  "I  asked  a  young  man  at  one  of  the 
Southern  schools  of  technology  why  he  chose  this 
training  rather  than  training  for  one  of  the  older 
professions.  'My  grandfather,'  said  he,  'was  a 
mighty  man  in  theolog}^  in  his  day.  He  knocked 
out  his  opponents  and  he  battered  the  devil.     My 


76  The  Highlanders  of  the  South 

father  was  a  lawyer  and  a  soldier.  He  fought  the 
United  States  by  argument  and  in  war.  I  notice 
that  the  devil  and  the  United  States  are  both  doing 
business  yet.  I  made  up  my  mind,  therefore,  that 
I  would  change  the  family  job  and  do  what  I  can 
to  build  mills  and  roads  in  Georgia.'  " 

Another  instance :  "Two  men  whose  parents  were 
'poor  white  trash'  have,  without  formal  education, 
in  ten  or  a  dozen  years  made  property  worth  $200,- 
000  by  growing  cotton  ;  and  they  manage  their  busi- 
ness as  systematically  as  any  business  in  New  York 
is  managed." 

"I  know  a  young  man  who  declined  a  comfort- 
able salary  and  a  post  of  honor  in  a  Northern  uni- 
versity because  he  wished  to  teach  country  youth  at 
his  own  Southern  college  on  an  insecure  guarantee 
(year  by  year)  of  only  $500.  There  are  hundreds 
such." 

We  read  further  relative  to  going  South :  "Go 
South,  young  man ;  but  do  not  go  unless  you  are 
willing  and  able  to  do  a  man's  work.  If  you 
wish  to  practice  the  law  or  to  preach,  you  will 
not  be  so  likely  to  succeed.  These  professions 
are  not  particularly  in  need  of  recruits  in  the 
South.  If  you  are  a  teacher,  and  especially  if 
you  think  more  of  doing  good  work  and  of  see- 
ing appreciative  results  of  your  work  than  of 
earning  a  large  income,  you  will  find  a  field  of 
usefulness  as  wide  as  the  most  ardent  ambition 
could  ask.  If  you  are  an  engineer  or  any  such 
craftsman — a  man  who  can  build  things — you  will 
find  profitable  work  and  plenty  of  it.  The  land 
cries  out  for  builders,  developers,  workers,  prac- 
tical men;  and  great  rewards  await  them.     It  has 


The  Progress  of  the  South  77 

(and   to   spare)    philosophers   and   politicians   and 
professional  men  of  all  the  old  sorts." 

The  magazine  from  which  we  quote  so  liberally 
in  this  chapter  pays  the  highest  tribute  to  the  South 
by  the  following,  our  final  quotation : 

"The  South  has  worked  out  three  fundamental 
tasks  which  all  the  w^orld  may  profit  by : 

"(i)  How  to  teach  the  farmer  who  is  now  on  the 
land  to  double  his  crop ; 

"(2)  How  to  teach  boys  and  girls  practical  trades 
while  they  are  'getting  their  education' ; 

"(3)  How  to  govern  cities  without  politics  and 
without  graft." 
f  Do  you  know  of  any  section  of  this  great  nation 
of  which  this  may  be  said  with  a  greater  degree  of 
truthfulness?  We  do  like  honesty  and  fairness  and 
justice,  and  it  does  not  hurt  us  to  be  told  that  we 
possess  these  essentials,  particularly  when  the 
words  come  from  fair-minded  Northerners. 

Another  good  sign  is  that  people  of  the  South 
are  coming  to  have  a  more  sympathetic  view  of  edu- 
cation in  a  general  way.  They  no  longer  think  it 
should  be  confined  to  the  wealthy  and  the  large 
plantation  owner.  Educational  ideas  are  every- 
where widespread.  One  of  the  States,  Tennessee, 
appropriated  more  money  for  educational  purposes 
at  the  1909  session  of  its  General  Assembly  than  it 
had  appropriated  in  the  eight  previous  years.  This 
State  is  also  providing  for  three  normal  schools  for 
the  training  of  its  white  teachers,  one  to  be  located 
in  each  geographical  division  of  the  State.  One 
normal  school  is  also  provided  which  shall  be  for 
the  training  of  negro  teachers  exclusively.  Nearly 
all  the  other  States  in  the  South  are  taking  the  same 


78  The  Highlanders  of  the  South 

rapid  strides  in  education.  Of  course,  it  will  be 
years  before  our  standards  of  efficiency  are  up  to 
the  other  States  of  the  nation,  but  be  it  remembered 
we  are  going  in  that  direction. 

These  educational  advantages,  together  with  the 
iron,  coal,  cotton,  rice,  manufacturing,  and  small 
fruit  industries,  cannot  do  other  than  attract  the 
eyes  of  the  whole  country  toward  the  South. 
More  than  a  generation  ago  the  slogan  given  out 
by  Horace  Greeley  was,  "Go  West,  young  man,  and 
grow  up  with  the  country."  Is  it  too  much  to 
expect  that  even  in  this  generation  we  may  hear  the 
words,  "Go  South,  young  man,  and  grow  rich  with 
the  country"? 


A   WEAVER   AND   LOVER   OF   CATS 


CHAPTER  XII 
Unto  the  Last 

In  coming  to  the  final  chapter  it  may  not  be  out 
of  place  to  call  attention  to  the  fact  that  many  of 
these  mountain  people  are  as  clannish  to-day  as 
were  their  ancestors  among  the  Scottish  hills  cen- 
turies ago.  Only  such  clannishness  could  make  pos- 
sible the  mountain  feuds  that  existed  for  years  in 
some  parts  of  the  South.  And  they  break  out  once 
in  a  great  while  yet,  but  in  a  much  subdued  form. 

The  best  illustration  of  clannishness  outside  the 
feuds  is  in  the  family  of  the  old  lady  with  the  cats 
in  her  arms.  She  lives  alone  some  distance  from 
any  member  of  her  immediate  family,  yet  they  come 
to  see  her,  supply  wood  and  the  necessaries  of  life, 
and  do  all  that  is  possible  for  her  comfort.  They 
are  good  citizens  and  splendid  neighbors. 

To  broaden  out  a  little,  we  may  say  that  the 
South  as  a  whole  seems  to  be  in  an  era  of  develop- 
ment. Our  people  are  becoming  more  conservative 
and  are  helping  more  than  ever  to  give  an  opening 
for  the  use  of  Northern  capital,  energy,  and  brains. 
Not  that  we  do  not  have  all  these — 'twouldn't  be 
Southern  to  admit  it  if  we  didn't  have — but  that 
we  need  more. 

Men  are  becoming  less  prejudiced  toward  the 
education  of  the  masses  and  the  races,  and  more  re- 
ceptive to  all  the  Churches.  This  within  itself  is 
good  indication  of  sure  and  permanent  progress. 

As  might  be  expected,  the  men  bom  since  the 
79 


8o  The  Highlanders  of  the  South 

civil  war  are  more  conservative  than  their  fathers, 
and  it  is  perhaps  not  too  much  to  hope  that  the 
second  generation  since  that  fearful  struggle  will 
be  yet  far  more  helpful  in  the  development  of  their 
great  and  resourceful  country. 

Mr.  Taft  put  it  pretty  well,  as  the  following 
will  show : 

"Party  lines  are  breaking  up,  have  indeed  broken 
up  to  an  extent  not  generally  realized.  In  part,  this 
explains  Mr.  Taft's  rise  to  power ;  and,  at  the  same 
time,  it  gives  him  a  great  opportunity.  Can  we  not 
now  shake  off  a  large  part  of  the  incubus  which  the 
civil  war  left  resting  on  our  politics  for  over  a 
generation?  Mr.  Taft  has  stood  firmly  for  the 
essential  rights  of  a  colored  race  in  the  Philippines. 
At  the  same  time,  he  would  not  confer  on  them 
political  rights  and  duties  far  in  advance  of  their 
preparation.  And  he  has  a  very  sympathetic  under- 
standing of  the  Southern  white  man's  attitude.  One 
day  in  1905,  in  the  mid-Pacific,  a  little  crowd  of 
Congressmen  from  the  North  and  South  were  talk- 
ing of  the  'race  question'  with  him.  The  North- 
erners, of  the  civil-war  generation,  were  stiff  in 
the  prejudices  w^hich  had  been  hardened  in  the  old 
contests  over  reconstruction.  The  Southerners, 
young  men,  though  also  strong  in  their  particular 
prejudices,  could  still  come  halfway  in  the  argu- 
ment. As  the  party  broke  up,  Mr.  Taft  said  quietly 
to  one  of  them:  'Well,  there  is  one  thing  that  our 
conversation  shows  us,  anyway,  and  that  is,  we 
younger  men  on  both  sides  can  get  fairly  close 
together.'  "^ 

» Taken  from  "Taft  the  Administrator,"   James   A.   LeRoy   in  the 
Century  Magazine  for  March,  19 lo. 


Unto  the  Last  8 1 

Mr,  Taft's  thought  is  further  emphasized  by  a 
few  editorial  lines  taken  from  a  little  country  weekly 
newspaper  a  few  days  ago:  "As  fast  as  the  South 
can  bring  itself  away  from  the  narrow  prejudices 
of  sentimental  politics,  just  that  fast  it  will  be  made 
to  blossom  like  a  rose." 

Then  we  are  making  substantial  progress  in  an 
educational  way.  In  the  American  Educational 
Review  for  May,  1909,  we  read: 

"What  Dr.  Elmer  Ellsworth  Brown,  United 
States  Commissioner  of  Education,  is  pleased  to 
term,  in  his  latest  report,  'one  of  the  most  striking 
educational  movements  of  our  time,'  is  the  educa- 
tional campaign  now  going  on  in  the  South,  which, 
as  Dr.  Brown  says,  'is  making  a  chapter  of  surpass- 
ing human  interest  in  the  history  of  American 
civilization.'  The  public  interest  in  education  in  the 
South  is  now  vastly  greater  than  that  displayed  in 
political  events,  and  this,  to  those  familiar  with  the 
Southern  States  and  Southern  people,  is  regarded 
as  a  turning  of  considerable  magnitude.  Every 
week  records  a  Southern  educational  event  of 
importance. 

"There  is  a  steady  increase  in  State  appropria- 
tions, in  many  instances  the  school  funds  having 
been  more  than  doubled  during  the  past  three  years. 
For  example,  Tennessee  has  raised  its  annual  State 
appropriation  from  $407,644  in  1904  to  $1,030,524 
in  1907,  and  during  the  same  period  Georgia  went 
from  $800,000  to  $1,591,441. 

"One  of  the  marked  features  of  the  general 
advance  is  the  consolidation  of  the  rural  schools. 
In  Virginia  200  schools  have  been  consolidated  to 
sixty;   in   four  years   Tennessee  has   reduced   her 


82  The  Highlanders  of  the  South 

number  of  schools  nearly  700  by  a  process  of  con- 
solidation; Florida  shows  a  single  colony  where 
forty-five  schools  have  been  made  into  fifteen;  and 
the  number  of  school  districts  in  Louisiana  trans- 
porting pupils  to  central  schools  was  a  year  ago 
reported  at  thirty-seven,  with  fifty  wagonettes  used 
in  the  service.  In  passing  it  is  worth  noting  that 
this  consolidation  and  centralization  of  schools  is 
helping  along  the  good  roads  movement." 

In  an  area  representing  about  a  third  of  one  of 
our  Southern  mountain  States  it  is  estimated  that 
more  than  100,000  of  the  adult  population,  or  about 
twenty  per  cent  of  the  entire  population  for  this 
area,  are  unconverted  and  without  a  church  home. 
This  same  State  as  a  whole  ranks  forty-sixth 
in  the  list  of  forty-eight  States  in  native- 
born  illiteracy.  It  pays  seven  dollars  below  the 
average  per  capita  for  education  in  the  United 
States,  and  it  pays  practically  nothing  for  the  edu- 
cation and  the  training  of  its  teachers.  Its  length 
of  school  term  is  less  than  six  months,  and  it  does 
almost  nothing  for  higher  education.  Below 
seventy  per  cent  of  its  scholastic  population  are 
enrolled  in  its  public  schools,  and  below  seventy-one 
per  cent  of  the  enrolled  attend  regularly.  The  cost 
for  prisons  and  courthouses  in  this  State  is  about 
seventeen  per  cent  more  than  for  school  buildings. 
This  State  is  a  fair  average  for  all  the  mountain 
States  of  the  South. 

No  one  questions  but  that  the  solution  to  the 
problem  is  largely  a  matter  of  education.  The 
Church  that  first  plants  a  little  mission  among  these 
mountains  followed  by  a  school  is  the  Church  not 
only  to  receive  these  people  as  faithful  members, 


Unto  the  Last  83 

but  it  receives  the  hearty  support  of  those  who  never 
join  any  Church,  which  is  often  an  opening  wedge 
for  greater  work  in  that  community.  The  moun- 
taineer seldom  travels  farther  than  from  one  ridge 
or  valley  to  another.  The  church  or  school  to  get 
him  is  the  one  to  come  right  up  to  his  door  and 
show  him  its  beauties  and  advantages  with  little  or 
no  effort  on  his  part.  He  usually  will  not  go  away 
from  home  to  get  culture,  refinement,  education, 
and  ethics ;  they  must  be  brought  to  him,  but  not 
on  a  silver  platter. 

No  greater  work  has  been  done  by  our  Church  or 
any  other  than,  through  its  Home  Missions  and 
Church  Extension  Board,  placing  one  hundred 
dollars  or  more  in  little  mountain  churches,  thus 
making  possible  their  building.  The  tragedy  of  the 
whole  matter  is  that  there  are  not  more  dollars  to 
go  in  these  churches.  Just  now  the  writer  has  in 
mind  several  churches  in  course  of  erection  or 
planned  each  of  which  must  have  one  hundred 
dollars  or  more  from  this  Board  or  fail.  And  in 
each  place  a  church  and  the  influences  going  with 
it  are  badly  needed.  If  the  Board  but  had  the 
money ! 

Then  there  are  our  schools.  No  people  have 
minds  more  receptive  to  education  than  the  three 
classes  herein  mentioned.  But  they  must  have  the 
schools  placed  at  their  doors.  The  preparatory 
school  can  do  the  greatest  good  of  any  school. 
Once  the  mountaineer  gets  that  much  at  home,  he 
can  and  often  does  go  away  to  college  and  uni- 
versity. The  illiteracy  in  many  of  our  mountain 
sections  is  appalling.  In  almost  all  the  mountain 
counties   the   illiterate   voter  holds  the  balance  of 


84  The  Highlanders  of  the  South 

power  in  anything  like  a  closely  contested  election. 
Imagine  possible  results,  if  you  please! 

But  the  possibilities  of  the  mountaineer  are  great. 
He  has  back  of  him  generations  of  almost  perfect 
health.  I  lis  brain  is  perhaps  the  most  perfect  in 
form  of  that  of  any  people  on  earth.  The  elasticity 
of  its  gray  matter  is  surpassed  only  by  its  tenacity. 

From  the  figures  submitted  it  is  seen  that  the 
State  provision  for  education  is  wholly  inadequate. 
Even  in  the  opinion  of  the  most  sanguine  and  op- 
timistic Southerner  the  mountain  States  will  not 
for  twenty-five  years  yet,  at  least,  provide  adequate 
educational  facilities  for  these  Highlanders  of  the 
South.  Therefore,  it  is  up  not  only  to  our  own 
Church  but  to  other  denominations  as  well  to  do 
this. 

Cannot  our  Church  get  the  ear  of  the  thinking 
North,  the  farsighted  East,  and  the  cosmopolitan 
West  in  such  a  way  as  to  move  them  to  give  of 
their  abundance  to  the  development  of  the  greatest 
latent  powers  possessed  by  any  peoples  ? 

A  mission  and  a  school  mean  a  chapel  and  a  col- 
lege. They  also  mean  men  for  India,  China,  Japan, 
Korea,  and  the  islands  of  the  sea.  They  mean 
what  is  even  of  greater  iniport — men  to  stay  right 
here  among  these  mountains  and  help  make  the 
Church  a  broader  and  a  greater  benefactor  of  the 
human  race  than  it  has  yet  been.  O,  men  of  God, 
will  ye  say  us  nay? 

Our  people  can  do  more  than  they  think  for.  but 
they  are  not  yet  educated  to  it — they  do  not  yet  have 
the  vision  of  the  heights  they  should  reach.  We 
must  help  and  get  help  right  on  until  the  vision 
comes,  as  it  surely  will. 


Unto  the  Last  85 

A  member  of  a  Conference  Church  Extension 
Board  was  asked  by  a  Northerner  visiting  the  South 
as  a  Church  official  if  it  would  be  fair  to  recommend 
help  by  the  Church  Extension  Board  for  the  erec- 
tion of  a  church  in  a  certain  small  Southern  town. 
The  Southern  member  replied  in  the  affirmative, 
much  to  the  surprise  of  the  visiting  official,  and 

explained  himself  by  saying:  "The  class  at  G 

is  able  to  give  to  the  Board  twice  the  amount  asked 
by  them  as  a  loan  and  donation  from  the  Board, 
but  they  do  not  believe  it.  So  long  as  people  think 
they  are  poor  they  are.  We  must  help  until  our 
people  are  educated  to  see  the  blessedness  of  giv- 
ing. 

And  thus  it  is  ever  with  us — the  specter  of  a  past 
glory  standing  in  the  way  of  a  living  duty  and 
obligation ! 

Church  officials,  like  government  officials,  often 
pass  through  without  making  close  examination  of 
the  situation.  To  merely  visit  an  Annual  Confer- 
ence does  not  mean  much.  But  getting  out  into 
the  country  with  a  Methodist  circuit-rider  means  a 
great  deal.  It  means  seeing  the  problem  face  to 
face,  learning  how  it  is  solved,  and  getting  a  com- 
prehensive view  of  the  great  needs  of  our  Church 
to  help  the  people  in  remote  and  untrodden  places. 
Come ! 

You  would  be  surprised  to  have  a  Methodist 
preacher  take  you  into  a  community  far  up  in  the 
mountains  where  the  moral  relation  of  the  sexes  is 
hardly  more  sacred  than  among  the  lower  animals. 
Yet  this  man  is  the  only  preacher  to  carry  a  message 
of  personal  purity  and  cleanliness  of  life.  Many, 
many  such  communities   have  no  preacher  at  all. 


86  'The  Highlanders  of  the  South 

And  the  people  are  native  white  Southern  moun- 
taineers, too.  Many  such  homes  are  bare  of  even 
the  commonest  furniture  and  home  comforts,  not 
having  even  a  comb  for  the  hair,  and  they  almost 
invariably  wash  the  face  at  the  spring  branch  where 
there  is  one  I 

But  yet  even  these  people  are  full  of  sacrifice  for 
good  once  they  get  the  idea — see  the  vision.  Some- 
times when  the  boy  gets  the  thought  that  the  sister 
should  be  educated  she  is  sent  to  school  while  he 
hires  out  to  the  more  substantial  fanner  and  helps 
pay  her  tuition.  Is  not  that  a  noble  spirit — strange 
mixture  of  good  and  evil?  Do  you  not  think  such 
a  dormant  spirit  among  a  people  to  be  numbered  by 
the  hundreds  of  thousands  is  worth  rendering  more 
than  latent?  Will  you  not  with  your  money  and 
brains  and  energy  help  us  to  do  it?  Money  helps 
much,  brains  and  energy  help  more,  but  your  pres- 
ence is  the  greatest  asset  of  all.    Come !    See !    Do ! 


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